We have reached the final chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology, in the good company of H. S. Harris’ unique paragraph-by-paragraph commentary, Hegel’s Ladder. This has been a long journey, but I at least have found it eminently worthwhile. Reading through Harris’ book for a second time, with Hegel’s own work in hand, and recording my own notes on the detailed development of Hegel’s actual literal argument has greatly improved my apprehension of the overall structure and movement of Hegel’s work. I first looked at the Phenomenology more than 45 years ago, and — like most people, I think — really failed to coherently grasp the forest, becoming lost in the trees. Now I think I understand the forest.
Of course, no one should regard my notes as a replacement for the original, either of Hegel’s or Harris’ work. But I hope they provide some helpful orientation.
I had thought this project was nearly done, but on rereading Hegel’s chapter on “Absolute Knowledge” this morning, most of the individual sentences strike me as potentially deserving their own posts. Though it presupposes the entire preceding development, this is perhaps the most lucid part of Hegel’s whole book, containing innumerable riches (even in the old Baillie translation, which I again apologize for using here — my copies of Miller and Pinkard are still MIA). It is where everything comes together. So, I will probably end up lingering on it longer than expected. (For my own earlier take on this, see “Absolute” Knowledge?)
The first paragraph of Hegel’s chapter reads, “The Spirit manifested in manifest [Baillie has “revealed”] religion has not as yet surmounted its attitude of consciousness as such; or, what is the same thing, its actual self-consciousness is not at this stage the object it is aware of. Spirit as a whole and the moments distinguished in it fall within the sphere of figurative thinking, and within the form of objectivity. The content of this figurative thought is Absolute Spirit. All that remains now is to cancel and transcend this bare form; or better, because the form appertains to consciousness as such, its true meaning must have already come out in the shapes or modes consciousness has assumed” (Baillie trans., p. 791). So far, this is just a summary of what went before, but there is more yet to come.
For now it is worth noting again that the “attitude of consciousness as such” is to focus on the presented or represented object as if it were self-contained and purely external, i.e., fully independent of us and our purposes. There is indeed truth in this, even from the beginning. It is a necessary partial perspective that recurs over and over again on many different levels. Since how things are is never just up to us to characterize in whatever way we might wish, a recognition of the “independence” of objects plays a salutary role. Moreover, every formulation of a view of the world necessarily takes a stance on how things “really are”.
What is naive is to think that the content of such a stance is the only story that needs to be told, or that we ever have completely isolated, pure “content”.
This is a completely general point that also applies to religion. Kant and Hegel have taught us that nothing that is an object for us is ever entirely separated from us. The main attitude and value of religion is a recognition of something greater than ourselves, but the quality and manner of our recognition of something greater than ourselves is nonetheless of central import. The further implications of this reach into territory that can easily become socially divisive, so they call for sensitive treatment.
Harris’ commentary on this paragraph begins, “Hegel’s Absolute Knowledge is simply the self-conscious awareness of what the ‘manifest religion’ of the universal human community really means as a concretely logical experience of the individual thinker in (and for) the community. We have now understood that the function of Religion in human life and experience is to express the universally shared consciousness that a community must have (if it is a community of rational consciousness). Religion is the consciousness of the community’s relation to the world, and of its own self-cognitive structure (as a unity with many members). When that actual structure is fully consistent with itself as cognition, then the community is rational. Knowing this, we can see that, if there is to be any ‘absolute knowledge’ it has to be the knowledge expressed in the religion of a community which has arrived a rational relationship with the world, and with itself; it is the knowledge that is finally and demonstrably necessary (in a logical sense, and not just as a matter or received general conviction) for the complete realization of human Reason. Reason is not ‘common’ to humans in the way that their body skeletons are. It is communally recognized, because it is the constructive achievement of the human community, by the community” (Hegel’s Ladder II, p. 709).
This seems technically correct to me, if a little cold. I would emphasize that we are talking about ethics here, not just cognition, and I think the message is better conveyed by Hegel’s own highlighting of mutual recognition and forgiveness. I somewhat prefer my own formula that religion for Hegel is ultimately what keeps conscience honest.
“The idea that we are all endowed with Reason ‘by nature’ and that it unfolds ‘naturally’ in us, is an error of the Enlightenment, from which the speculative recollection of the history of how our Reason has actually developed, decisively frees us. If we were not the spiritual offspring of a religion that teaches us that all human beings are the children of a God who is supremely rational, and who loves us all equally to the point where He took our nature (with all of its limits and sufferings) upon Him in order to exist for us as ‘Spirit’, we would not have the concept of human rationality (theoretical and practical) that we do have” (ibid).
The first part of this I think is extremely important. Reason is not innate.
Historically specific features of Christianity play an important role in Hegel’s overall narrative. I am myself still doubtful about claims privileging one particular tradition as a unique source or necessary prerequisite for what ought to be universal human values. Harris follows the common opinion that necessary ingredients are simply not there in Aristotle, for instance. While Kant historically heightened sensitivity to universal humanity in the form of equality, I contend that the idea is implicitly already there in Aristotle’s recommendation to broadly apply norms of friendship, and his clear recognition that social status should not affect our judgment of individuals.
“Having identified that form for us, Hegel must now show us that the consensus involves an unselfconscious recognition of what we know the rational function of religion in society to be; and secondly, that when this unselfconscious knowledge is logically interpreted, it provides a functionally complete and coherent concept of what human rationality is….. Reason is the living substance that becomes subjectively self-conscious in these mortal organisms whose intercommunication constitutes the distinctively ‘human’ (or free spiritual) world.”
“Religion continually refers to the eternal aspect of Reason in its purity, as if it were a supersensible Beyond…. but the Hegelian concept of ‘Spirit’ — combined with the concept of ‘the Spirit’ that we find empirically in our religion — sublates this necessity, and makes ‘eternity’ a moment of ‘time’, just as ‘time’ is a moment of ‘eternity’. [See Time and Eternity in Hegel.] By bringing out this identity, the philosophical interpretation of God’s Incarnation sublates His absolute otherness.”
Throughout Hegel’s Ladder, Harris has regularly alternated between religious forms of expression and “Enlightened” criticism of religion. In general I think he does an excellent job of steering a middle course through these difficult waters. In a number of cases he uses language that is more overtly religious than Hegel’s own. In the following he goes in the opposite direction.
“Scientifically there is no need to use the name ‘God’ at all” (p. 710).
Harris’ statement technically concerns the name only, and is probably technically correct when construed narrowly. Historically, though, statements of this kind have been considered inflammatory, and Hegel did not actually express himself this way. The passage in Hegel that Harris cites (paragraph 66 in the Miller numbering used by English-speaking scholars) is concerned with the general logical fact that proper names are not interchangeable with concepts, which I would fully endorse. Harris previously remarked that God seems to disappear in the Reason section of the Phenomenology, but then “appears” again in the Spirit section.
“Hegel always maintained that Religion and Philosophy were the knowledge of the ‘same’ content in different ‘forms’. But those who think that the change of ‘form’ leaves the truth of ‘Religion’ effectively untouched, are deceiving themselves either about what Hegel meant, or else about their own (not yet properly Hegelian) relation to the faith of the religious tradition from which Hegel’s language is derived” (ibid).
“Hegel accepts the claim of his religious tradition that ‘Faith is a kind of knowledge’; and we have seen what a vitally important ‘kind of knowledge’ it is. It is the universal context of all the ‘knowledge’ that saves us from a Hobbesian chaos. But equally Hegel accepts that faith is an imperfect kind of knowledge; and when he claims to turn it into absolute knowledge, he is quite consciously and deliberately claiming to do away with its ‘imperfect’ character as ‘faith’ altogether….” (p. 711).
This seems well balanced and textually accurate.
“[N]o ‘postulates’ that transcend experience are necessary. Specifically Hegel does away with the Kantian postulates (God, freedom, and immortality) by showing what the rational interpretation of the terms in actual experience is…. [O]f them all, the postulate of ‘God’ is the one that is the most radically affected” (ibid).
This is a technical point about postulation, which has to do with Kant’s particular approach to these matters.
“Faith knows that God is Man, that the eternal Reason is necessarily embodied” (p. 712). But “The surrendering of the human will to God’s Will is only possible because God’s real identity as human Reason, his necessary humanity, is recognized” (p. 713).
“[Faith] takes the home of its longing to be elsewhere than here” (ibid). A certain common traditionally accepted notion of faith treats it as a kind of other-worldly “knowledge”, but there are also grounds for arguing — even in a traditional context — that this is not its highest form. Elsewhere, I have suggested viewing faith as more primarily a way of being in real life rather than an abstract belief or knowledge claim.
“The whole journey of the Phenomenology is necessary in order to disabuse ‘Reason’ of this dialectical illusion” (ibid).
As a student of Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel, I don’t believe in dialectical illusion. This was Kant’s overly polite way of pointing out how Reason needs to be carefully separated from the dogmatic received “truths” accepted by Cartesians and Wolffians. The whole issue of the relation between philosophy and religion is difficult, not least because it embraces substantial social concerns. But it is true that Hegel wants to direct our attention to Spirit incarnate in this life.
The Postmodern Peripatetic 