A Summary of Hegel's Important Works

 

History has been unjust to Hegel but in recent times his philosophy is garnering some attention. In my opinion he is perhaps the greatest western philosopher since Plato and Aristotle. He should be counted as a Platonist who has developed the Aristotelian version of Platonism combined with Spinoza’s theory of material causality of God and the demands of critical philosophy. Below is a brief summary of his important works:

1.     Faith and Knowledge: This is work is critical of Kant, Fichte and Jacobi all of whom believed that it is important to make room for faith by limiting the pretensions of reason. Jacobi argues that reason cannot prove its own validity and so we need a salto mortale to justify reason - a faith based or poetical justification of reason. The need for such a justification arises because reason is mediated and incapable of providing immediate knowledge. What is mediate is finite and through the finite or conditioned we cannot grasp the unconditioned. So Enlightenment rationality based on mediated reason leads to nihilism because it traps us within the sphere of the conditioned reality as ultimately true while keeping the unconditioned outside us. When truth and goodness are relativized to finite subjectivity they lose their value. Against this Hegel notes that he agrees with the criticism of Enlightenment’s one-sided emphasis of mediation but Reason for him is a mediated-immediacy. So an an expert due to his trained eye can see many things regarding his object of study that an untrained eye cannot. Further, in Platonic tradition Reason was not equated with its finite manifestation within an embodied human being but with Nous which is infinite reason - containing all Forms or whatever is thinkable within his intellect. The mode of divine cognition was intellectual intuition or immediate knowledge of all array Forms united in one - the Form of Being. Hegel’s view is distinct in so far as mediation is included within immediate knowing. What he is against is one-sided emphasis either or mediation or immediacy. By appealing to immediate knowledge one can justify any content. Rational cognition contains mediation with the other as negated within itself - so in order to ascend to the level of pure thought or the unconditioned which is the sphere of the Idea, one negates all finite cognition. The cognition of the unconditioned is mediated by the negation of the finite. The finite is not however reduced to non-being but reaffirmed as a mode of being of the infinite that contains its own other (finite) within itself. There is no affirmation without negation and vica-versa. Spirit (Geist) is purely affirmative because it contains its negation within itself. This is the theory of determinate negation. In Hegel’s view the subjective consciousness posits the universal that is valid in and for-itself which is contrary to the Enlightenment view specially held by Kant that simply by thinking a content it is invalidated - reduced to a mere phenomena. According to Hegel however when the universal content passes out of the finite subjective consciousness, this finite consciousness is negated or really its character of passing outside itself is negated and the finite is reaffirmed as a mode of the infinite spirit. So, the path to the unconditioned lies in negating the finite which however is re-affirmed at a higher level. Both immediate knowing and reflective understanding are abstract modes of knowledge because they emphasize either immediacy or mediation to the exclusion of the other. Abstract identity is their basic principle.

2.    Phenomenology of Spirit: This is probably the most famous work of Hegel. This work is the science of experience where Hegel seeks to educate the ordinary consciousness about the presence of logical categories within experience to show the rationality of experience. The preface to this work contains an introduction to Hegel’s epistemology. According to Hegel a dialectic is subjective if the contradictions found in thinking an object are considered to be in the subject rather than the object. Hegel’s endeavor is to show that the dialectic is in the object itself. The object posits its other and by negating the other-being, returns to itself, this negation of negation is thought. Take for instance the ordinary objects of everyday life or what we call a Thing, its difference from another is outside its identity. In being identical with oneself there is no difference but a thing would not be what it is without also being different from another. The dialectic of understanding whose object is the Thing, shows that difference is really an essential moment of the thing’s identity. There is contradiction between identity and difference but this is resolved in the transition from understanding which is the sphere of consciousness to self-consciousness where there is difference from oneself in because one cannot be the subject and object of consciousness simultaneously without positing some difference from oneself but this difference is negated within self-consciousness - one posits oneself as one’s own other and negates it and so is at home within oneself. One is self-same even in difference. The dialectic is generated by discrepancy between form and matter (mode of knowing and the content of knowledge) and in self-consciousness there is identity of form and matter. However the content must develop itself by positing its other and negating it and so what is implicitly within the concept must be posited explicitly. For example the seed is the immediate stage of the tree which must develop itself by positing its stem, branches, leaves etc. which are the various shapes in the development of the tree. The tree is the immanent end of the seed and even though the beginning and the end are the same, they are not completely identical. The process is a return to oneself but through the accretion and development of content. The infinity of self-consciousness is apparent to the phenomenological observer but not to the subject of knowing and this content has to be learnt by passing through various shapes that culminate in absolute knowing. The end of Phenomenology however is the beginning of the Science of Logic. The development of the shapes of consciousness does not occur in chronological order but in the order of the Concept. One has to understand the movement of the Concept within experience to understand its rational basis.

3.    Elements of the Philosophy Of Right: This book contains Hegel’s political philosophy whose object of study is freedom which is will in and for-itself. Hegel reconciles subjective freedom and objective freedom. The conflict between the two arises because the subject through reflection that separates the self from substance (custom and tradition, the field of actuality). The self in vacuous self-identity negates all externality and so it is empty form without content. This inwardness which is antithetical to externality leads to the evaporation of all moral and rational content. In other words it gives rise to nihilism - there is no good and bad, nothing true or false. Reflective understanding is at fault here because it separates the inner and the outer and is unable to resolve this antithesis. In the standpoint of Reason we can say about Spirit that its externality is its interiority. This antithesis cannot be resolved through the principle of beauty because it shies away from negation or the labor of the concept and its unity is an undifferentiated unity that is not articulated through difference. For instance, a child is not good but innocent, its goodness he proves through the law of his action as his life passes from childhood to old age. The false sense of inwardness is empty of all content because it is subject without substance. On the other hand the emphasis on one-sided externality fails to acknowledge the right of self-consciousness - to know the good in order to act in accordance with it rather than blindly. On this side there is content but no form of truth. The development of the concept of will goes through the stages of private property, family, civil society and finally the rational state. Here state connotes not the government but the mode of life of people living in a community. An individual without the state and the state without an individual are abstractions and the individual gains his freedom within life in the community. Hegel approvingly cites a conversation attributed by him to Pythagoras - when a man asks how he should train his son in ethical life, Pythagoras replied make him a citizen of a country with good laws. Hegel separates the ethical from the moral. The latter is the sphere of conviction but one can give oneself a moral content depending on what one has convinced oneself of. In ethics there is both conscience and objective content in the form of the duties and the tasks one performs within a community. Subjective freedom is involved in this so far as one picks a vocation that one is interested in. Freedom is defined as being at home with the other. Since in knowledge there is identity of knower and known while in sense-perception there is matter given outside us, only in reason can there be freedom while in other modes like in chasing sense-pleasure one is driven by something external which indicates the lack of freedom. In reason the otherness of the other is negated and posited by oneself.

4.    Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: This is an introduction to Hegel’s philosophy. It is divided into: Logic, Philosophy of Nature and Spirit. It is not enough to develop the logical categories or the Concept without also considering the objective side of things. Nature must also reveal itself to be rational. The unity of the Concept and the Object is the Absolute Idea. This Idea develops into spirit - the practical end of theoretical wisdom. Hegel has most often been criticized for his views on the practical end of all humanity which he considered to be life in the rational state. But what are the alternatives - the permanent death of the individual in moksha or nirvana and where the goal is reached through asceticism or the afterlife where people could not even die of boredom.

5.    Science of Logic: This is the most important work of Hegel’s. It is pure logic which is identical with metaphysics. Pure logic deals with a-priori or intelligible content which is solely the object of pure thought. The categories of thought are not taken from judgement found in ordinary discourse but are deduced a-priori through the method of an immanent dialectic. Each category through its inner logic leads to another. The immanent dialectic is the critique of the category of thoughts and also its content. The work has been divided into: doctrine of being, doctrine of essence and the doctrine of the concept. Logic in order to be valid or true of reality must be atleast presuppositionless. As noted above this is achieved through negating the presupposition through which one ascends to the level of pure thought. Here one observes that when all content has been abstracted there is only the pure ‘I’ which is pure being (this is building on Descartes’s cogito). The development of the concept of pure being leads to essence or determinate being. The essence of ‘essence’ is to appear - it is not possible for the essence to not show itself. Its actuality is the unity of inner and outer. What is concrete or most actual is the Universal. To be concrete means to be the unity of opposed determinations and Spirit contains all determinations within itself. The individual as isolated by the universal is an abstraction. Although there may be an existence that deviates from the concept - the Concept or its law is what persists. The concept-less existence is transitory and a mere semblance. What is actual is what persists. This part ends with the concept of necessity and in the doctrine of concept this necessity is shown to be identical with rational-immanent teleology or purpose. In dialectics the truth is the whole and what comes after in the unfolding of the moments of the Concept is the truth of the preceding moment.

6.    Lectures on Philosophy of Religion: Philosophy and religion have the same content but the form of religion is representation in symbols and myths while the super-sensible in-itself is accessible only in the form of pure thought. Philosophy wants to convert the representations within religion to their true content in pure thought. Philosophy is not opposed to feelings but feeling cannot justify religion and within feeling there is no negation of the finite. Hence the need for reason to make the transition from the finite to the infinite. The finite subject must negate his self-will and posit the universal that is valid in and for-itself and act in accordance with this valid content. A religion that takes its representations very seriously has made the content of religion contingent - open to miracles and historical circumstances. Philosophy is based on the testimony of spirit, what is true and what is good must be brought about from within oneself. Hegel here also clarifies the relation between religion and the state. He opposes modern secularism that excludes religion because a formal constitution cannot implement itself without conviction and conviction is the sphere of religion. As we saw in the case of the French Revolution, people acted in accordance with their conviction not the written law and brought an end to monarchy. The content of state and religion is the same but religion adds to it the form of truth and it may be recalled that matter is not something external to the form but the correct form is the matter. The different moments of the Concept of religion are: religion of nature which contains religions like Hinduism and Buddhism among other religions, the religion of beauty comprising the Jewish and the Greek religion and the Consummate Religion which is Christianity but not in the historical form that it has occurred but in the culmination of the Concept of religion in the future. Its relation to the previous historical Christianity is in the representation of trinity which symbolizes the validation of the human content (Christ, son of God) within God (the Father) where the one-sidedness of the Father and The Son is negated and we have the singular moment of the Concept in the Holy Spirit. Other representations of trinity in religions of Hinduism and Taoism do not represent the three as one single essence where it is shown that the human element is an essential moment of the Divine concept. While both Platonists and Hegel agree that there cannot be an unmanifest God because God to be God must reveal Himself and the world is a revelation of God, Hegel goes further and says that God humanizing Himself is an essential moment of Divinity. It is in this way human subjectivity is validated and God is not seen only as a substance to which subjectivity is accidental but also as Subject that determines itself through its other. Hegel defines God as Absolute Spirit in a community of believers that lends itself to the misunderstanding that God’s existence is nothing over and above the existence of the believers. The otherness of the believers is sublated in Absolute Spirit and the true Concept of the divine is not the infinite alone because an infinite in antithesis to the finite is then itself finite. The truth is the unity of the infinite and the finite.

7.    Other works: There are lectures on history of philosophy which are perhaps Hegel’s easiest reads. This work explains what philosophy is, how progress in philosophy is made and Hegel’s elucidation of philosophies of the past is very insightful. There are also lectures on political philosophy, logic, world history and aesthetics. His Berlin Phenomenology contains useful criticisms of Kant and Schelling.