Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity

Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity Herbert Marcuse translated by Seyla Benhabib The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England English translation © I 987 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This work was originally published in I 932 under the title H egels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit. A second, unrevised edition was published under the ab breviated title Hegels Ontologze und die Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit, © I 968 by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any in formation storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the pub lisher. This book was set in Baskerville by DEKR Corporation and printed and bound by The Murray Printing Co. in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marcuse, Herbert, 1898- Hegel's ontology and the theory of historicity. (Studies in contemporary German social thought) Translation of: Hegels Ontologie und die Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit. Bibliography: p. Includes index. I. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831- Contributions in ontology 2. Ontology-History-! 9th century. 3. History-Philosophy-History-! 9th century. I. Title. II. Series. B2949.05M313 1987 111'.092'4 86-27202 ISBN 0-262-13221-4 Contents Translator's Introduction IX Bibliographic Note xli List of Bibliographic Abbreviations xliii Introduction: The Problem of Historicity as the Starting Point and Goal of This Work. The Purpose of the Present Interpretation 1 I Interpretation of Hegel's Logic in the Light of Its Ontological Problematic: Being as Motility 1 The Analytical and Historical Problem at the Origin of Hegel's First Published Writings 9 2 The Attainment of a New Concept of Being through an Analysis of Kant's Concept of Transcendental Synthesis 22 3 The Absolute Difference within Being: Equality- with-Self-in-Otherness. Being as Motility 39 4 Motility as Change. The Finitude of Beings 50 5 Finitude as Infinity. Infinity as Characteristic of Motility 57 VI Contents 6 The Emergence of a New Dimension of Being and Motility: The "Recollection" of Immediate Beings as "Essence" 65 7 The Motility of Essence in Its Two Dimensions. The "Ground" and the "Unity" of Beings 71 8 Being as Existence 80 9 Actuality as the Fulfillment of Being 90 10 A Summary Characterization of Actuality as Motility 103 11 The Comprehending Being (the Concept) as True Being. Substance as Subject 111 12 The Mode of Being of the Concept: The Individuation of Universality. Judgment and Conclusion 122 13 The Unfree Reality of the Concept: Objectivity 135 14 The Free and True Reality of the Concept: The Idea 144 15 Life as the Truth of Beings. The Ideas of Life and Cognition 153 16 The Absolute Idea 171 1 7 Overview of the Preceding and Transition to Part II 187 II The Ontological Concept of Life in Its Historicity as the Original Foundation of Hegelian Ontology 18 Life as the Fundamental Concept of the Early Theological Writings 201 19 Life as the Form of "Absolute Spirit" in the Jena Logic. 219 VII Contents Life as an Ontological Concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit 20 Introduction and General Definition of the Concept of Life 228 21 The Immediacy of the Life Process 250 22 The Historicity of the Life Process: The Actualization of Self-Consciousness as Reason 264 23 The Historicity of the Life Process: The Actualization of Self-Consciousness in the "Doing of Each and Everyone." The Object of "Work" and the "Thing Itself" 276 24 The Transformation of the Concept of Life into the Ontological Concept of Spirit 292 25 The Transformation of the Process of Knowing into the Process of Absolute Knowledge. The Fundamental Determinations of "History" in the Conclusion to the Phenomenology of Spirit 305 26 Conclusion: Hegel's Fundamental Definition of Historicity as Presented in Dilthey's "The Construction of the Historical World in the Human Sciences" 319 Notes 325 Glossary 333 Index 347 Translator's Introduction I Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity was originally pub lished in 1932 in Frankfurt as Hegels Ontologie und die Grundle gung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit. It was reissued without revisions and under an abridged title in 1968 and 1975. Al though French and Italian translations of this work have ex isted since the beginning of the seventies, 1 various attempts to render it into English since the late sixties were never com pleted; hence the present translation is the first English version of this text. Hegel's Ontology culminates a period in Herbert Marcuse's intellectual development variously characterized as "Heideg gerian Marxism," "phenomenological" or "existential Marx ism."2 Marcuse had received his doctorate at the University of Freiburg in 1922 with a thesis on Der Deutsche Kunstlerroman. 3 He had subsequently returned to Berlin and worked for several years in an antiquarian book-dealer and publishing firm. The publication of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time in 1927 led Marcuse, in his own words, "to go back to Freiburg ... in order to work with Heidegger. I stayed in Freiburg and worked with Heidegger until December 1932, when I left Germany a few days before Hitler's ascent to power, and that ended the per sonal relationship."4 Marcuse had originally intended the pres ent work to be his Habilitationsschrift, which would have earned him the venia legendi, the right to teach, thus completing the major step toward an academic career in a German university. X Translator's Introduction There appear to be two versions of the circumstances sur rounding the fate of Hegel's Ontology as a Habilitationsschrift. According to the Philosophisches Lexicon, edited by E. Lange and D. Alexander and published in East Berlin in 1982, Heidegger rejected the work on the basis of political differences.5 This version is repeated by J. Mittelstrass in the Philosophisches Lex icon edited by him as well. 6 Both sources agree that Edmund Husserl, who had been a member of Marcuse's doctoral dis sertation examining committee, had intervened on Marcuse's behalf at this time and had recommended him to Director Max Horkheimer as a future coworker of the Institut fur Sozial Jorschung. According to a second version, which is the one more com monly followed by the Anglo-American scholars of Marcuse's work, Marcuse, who had seen the writing on the wall by the end of 1932, thought "it perfectly clear that I would never be able to qualify for a professorship [mich habilitieren konnen] under the Nazi regime,"7 and thus possibly never formally submitted the work to the Philosophical Faculty of the Univer sity of Freiburg. Barry Katz cites Marcuse as stating that to the best of his knowledge Martin Heidegger had never read the work.8 Despite some evidence to the contrary,9 this second version of events surrounding Marcuse's Habilitationsschrift appears more plausible, because according to the first version, political differences, and particularly Heidegger's pro-Nazi political sympathies, which became amply public with his "Rektorats rede" of May 27, 1933, 10 are projected backward to character ize earlier attitudes. Actually, Marcuse himself, although ac knowledging that after the fact one could see the "repressive" aspects of Being and Time, emphatically disputes that prior to 1933 one could notice any hint of Heidegger's sympathies for National Socialism. 11 Whether it is the passage of time, however, that has led Marcuse to this more generous interpretation of Heidegger's politics, is hard to say. In a letter written to Heidegger on August 28, 1947, from Washington, D.C., for example, Mar cuse is more conflicted about how to assess the break before XI Translator's Introduction and after May 1933 in Heidegger's life. Recognizing in himself the tortured attempts of a former student to come to grips with the devastating disappointment caused by someone hon ored, he writes: This week I will send you a package [Marcuse must be referring to "aid packages" sent to Germany after the war]. My friends have very much resisted this and have accused me of helping a man who has identified with a regime that has sent millions of my cobelievers to the gas chambers .... I can say nothing against this charge. Before my own conscience I have justified myself to myself with the argument that I send this package to a man from whom I learned philosophy from 1928 to 1932. I know that this is a poor excuse. The philosopher of 1933-34 cannot be completely different than the one before 1933, and this can even be less so, since you have philosophically justified, and expressed your enthusiastic support for the Nazi state and for the Fiihrer. 12 We have to conclude that at this point, given the evidence available to us, the events surrounding the academic fate of Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity remain obscure. While it appears that Marcuse never formally submitted the work to Heidegger himself or to the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Freiburg, informally he may have supplied Heidegger with a copy, either before or after publication. Sub sequently, Marcuse appears to have contradicted himself on how Heidegger did or could have reacted to Hegel's Ontology. Stating in some cases that Heidegger had probably never read the work, he appears to have told Jiirgen Habermas that Hei degger had rejected this work as a Habilitationsschrift. And when one compares the letter from 1946 with later statements from the Olafson interview and the short recollection of Heidegger entitled "EnWiuschung," both from 1977, Marcuse seems to have changed his mind on how to assess Heidegger's "turn" to Nazism in 1933.

Load more