The Future of Hegelian Metaphysics John W. Burbidge
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C Abstract: With the recent suspicion of metaphysics it is easy to be C R R I embarrassed by Hegel’s suggestion that his Logic is also a metaphysics. I S In this paper I want to argue that his conception of metaphysics is S The Future of I I S still highly relevant, and suggest some ways it could be developed S further. I start by suggesting how Hegel justifies his claim, and why & that justification still retains a measure of plausibility. Then I turn to & Hegelian MetaphysicsC a discussion of what we mean by cause, and how Hegel’s analyses of C R necessity, cause and reciprocity transform this concept in ways which are R I I T relevant to current developments in science. T I I Q Q U Keywords: Logic, Metaphysics, Cause, Necessity, Reciprocity U E E / I / John W. Burbidge In his Encyclopaedia Logic Hegel observes that his “Logic coincides Volume 4 / Volume 4 / Issue 1 with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thought that used Issue 1 to be taken to express the essentialities of things.”1 For all that the logic is the system of pure thought, these thoughts are not the empty categories of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, but the Logic “contains thought in so far as this thought is equally the fact (or object [Miller]) as it is in itself; or the fact (or object) in itself insofar as this is equally pure thought.” 2 The term translated by di Giovanni as “fact” and by Miller as “object” is the notorious Sache selbst. Whatever else might be involved by his use of this term, Hegel is evidently saying that the thoughts analyzed in the Science of Logic are not simply thoughts but capture what is essential about what Kant calls things in themselves. What is not often noticed is that this claim of the identity of thought and Sache comes just after two paragraphs in which Hegel has stressed that the Logic presupposes the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel says that the concept of a philosophical science emerges from his earlier work, and sets the context within which the logic develops. For it is in the Phenomenology that “the first immediate opposition” of consciousness and its object is gradually transcended as we “traverse all the forms of the relationship of consciousness to the object.”3 It is worth considering how that opposition of consciousness and object, which is represented in both Kant’s appeal to transcendental analysis and Nietzsche’s scepticism about what humans call truth, has been overcome. Hegel sets the stage in the Introduction to the Phenomenology. Rather than starting out from a preconceived idea 1Hegel 1991, §24, p. 56. 2Hegel 2010, p. 29; Hegel 1969, p. 49. Italics in the original. 3Hegel 2010, p. 28. 48 49 The Future of Hegelian Metaphysics of what knowledge is, he suggests, it is better to allow consciousness C distilled essence of what one knows one discovers that the results are not C R R to formulate its own claims. Any such claim to knowledge will involve I always what one expects, and one then incorporates that discovery into I both a certainty, and a claim to truth. In other words, it spells out in S one’s accumulated knowledge; and from revealed religion it has heard S I I some detail what kinds of effects that might conceivably have practical S that this is the ultimate rhythm of the universe, where the divine essence S bearings would result from putting it into practice. The belief in this acts to create a world, discovers the result is not what it expected, and claim is then advanced with the calm certainty that truth will emerge & then initiates a pattern in which original design is integrated with the way & as expected. When those conceptual expectations prove to be wrong C the world actually is, and where the believer has discovered in the dark C through an experienced encounter with reality, that certainty is shattered. R night of the soul that there is no truth out there, but that truth lies in the R I I In the aftermath a revised self-certain belief has to be formulated T dynamic flux of existence where concepts are always subject to revision. T that incorporates what still survives from the previous claim together I The concept of pure science which is presupposed by the Science of Logic I Q Q with what has been learned from its failure. Here we have a process of U is, then, nothing other than this process of learning from experience. U confident belief, an encounter with reality that shows the belief lacks E Thought has moved from a number of confident affirmations of fixed E truth, and a new, more comprehensive belief. By continually reworking the / belief, to a dynamic process that continually incorporates what it learns / conceptual expectations articulated in its beliefs, consciousness learns from its practical failures. Not only has thought been modified by what it Volume 4 / Volume 4 / from experience. Issue 1 has learned from experience, but the act of conceiving has incorporated Issue 1 I have formulated that dynamic in terms of belief and conceivable the open dynamic by which the wisdom achieved from cumulative effects in order to evoke an echo of C.S. Peirce. In his essay, “The experience is constantly revised by thought’s interaction with the world of fixation of belief” Peirce points out that the only reliable way of fixing reality. Because the logic emerges from and continues to implement this belief involves assuming that there is an independent Reality that will experiential process, it can be confident that its concepts are no longer frustrate and disprove inadequate beliefs; and in its sequel “How to pure a priori categories of transcendental thought, but metaphysical get our ideas clear” he defines a clear idea as one in which we work out principles that are implicit in the universe. what kinds of “effects that might conceivably have practical bearings, we In taking this approach, Hegel has abandoned Kant’s rigorous conceive the object of our conception to have.”4 What Hegel is outlining distinction between appearances and things in themselves, but at the in his introduction is essentially a version of Peirce’s pragmaticism same time he has incorporated Kant’s insight that knowledge involves -- a process whereby consciousness formulates a claim to knowledge integrating intuitions and concepts. On the one hand, as Robert Pippin that works out its conceivable practical implications, discovers that in has pointed out, for Hegel there are no pure intuitions, where the intellect fact key expectations are flawed, and retreats to develop the next step is radically passive, but all intuitions are moulded by thought.6 On in its quest for knowledge. It is not surprising that the first title for the the other hand, useful concepts are not purely a priori, but have been Phenomenology was “Science of the Experience of Consciousness.”5 formulated to take account of the way earlier conceptual formulations This work, then, traces the way conceptual formulations are have failed when applied to the world of experience. It is because he constantly corrected by the given facts of experience in a long and on- has provided a more dynamic understanding of the way concepts and going process, becoming ever more effective in predicting what will in intuitions interact that Hegel can then proceed to implement Kant’s fact occur when we put a confident knowledge claim into practice. When project of a “future metaphysics”.7 we come to its final chapter on “Absolute Knowing” we find that what it If this analysis is correct, there are implications about the strategy describes is little more than the general structure of that process. From one should adopt if one wants to do metaphysics in a Hegelian way. The the beautiful soul consciousness has learned that when one acts on the concepts he is analyzing are not peculiar to him, but are the result of the cumulative experience of western culture, epitomized by the variety 4 C.S. Peirce,”The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Get our Ideas Clear”1931-35,1958, vol. 5, §§ 384 of claims explored in the Phenomenology. The analysis itself simply and 402. There is no evidence that Peirce ever read the Phenomenology. The Harvard Libraries, however, hold a copy of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences of 1827 with Peirce’s book plate. This edition preceded the posthumous edition of the Werke which included material from Hegel’s lectures as additions. 6 Pippin 1989, Chapter 2. 5Robert Stern develops this reading in Stern 2009, pp. 218ff. Other readings of the Phenomenology 7Consider the title for hisProlegomena to any Future Metaphysics. For a more detailed justification of that incorporate pragmatic themes can be found in Flay 1984, Collins 2013, and Westphal 2015. this interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysical project, see Burbidge 2014a. 50 The Future of Hegelian Metaphysics 51 The Future of Hegelian Metaphysics attempts to lay out in detail what is implicitly embedded within those C II C R R thoughts. So a Hegelian metaphysics would take some of the fundamental I I concepts with which, as the result of our cumulative experience, we S The contemporary concept of cause reflects the influence of David S I I organize our understanding of the world and examine what they entail: S Hume and Immanuel Kant. For all that Hume traces our belief in causal S to what extent does our actual experience fit and to what extent does it necessity to customary habits of the mind derived from the repetition disconfirm what they articulate.