Sexual Difference and Development in Hegel's Encyclopedia in Their Logical, Natural, and Spiritual Aspects
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Sexual Difference and Development in Hegel's Encyclopedia in their Logical, Natural, and Spiritual Aspects By Jessica Polish Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy August, 2014 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Kelly Oliver, Ph.D John Lachs, Ph.D. Charles E. Scott, Ph.D. Elaine Miller, Ph.D. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I.Introduction.................................................................4 Geschlechtsdifferenz in Hegel’s Encyclopedia: a systematic approach . 4 References .............................................................5 II. Sexual Difference and Development in Hegel's Encyclopedia in their Logical, Natural, and SpiritualAspects ............................................................6 Philosophy and the Inheritance of Daughters . 6 Summary ..............................................................9 Notes ................................................................10 References ............................................................10 III. Speculative Logic: Geschlechtsdifferenz as a thought determination . 11 Friends and foes of Hegel’s logic . 11 Feminist friends and foes of Hegel’s logic? . 14 Hegel’s speculative logic: the content of pure thinking . 15 Geschlechtsdifferenz in the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic . 25 Prefatory remarks on the concept . 26 Geschlechtsverhältnis in Chemism ...................................27 Geschelchtsdifferenz in the logical Idea as Life .........................30 Conclusion: from logic to nature . 33 Notes ................................................................33 References ............................................................45 IV. Philosophy of Nature: The Ambiguous Sex Life of the Plant . 48 Friends and Foes of the Philosophy of Nature .................................48 Feminist friends and foes of the Philosophy of Nature ..........................50 Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: Metaphysics and the “so-called” empirical sciences . 51 Plant nature in the Philosophy of Nature .....................................55 The Genus Process in the Animal Organism . 67 Conclusion ............................................................69 Notes ................................................................69 References ............................................................72 V. Philosophy of Mind: The Plantlike Growth of Girls . 73 Feminist Approaches to Hegel’s Antigone: Dead or Alive? . 73 Prefatory notes to Philosophy of Mind .......................................76 Reconstruction of anthropological girlhood development . 77 “Theagesofman” ................................................79 Childhood . 79 The unborn child . 80 The infant: the child proper . 80 Boyhood . 81 Youth ....................................................83 Manhood . 84 OldAge ..................................................85 The sexual relation . 86 Interlude: Krell’s Son of Spirit .............................................90 And now, back to the “real” Hegel... 92 The sex relation in the Philosophy of Right ...................................94 VI. Conclusion: Implications of the Plant-Girl . 109 Addendum: Sexual Difference in the Brother-Sister Relationship in the Phenomenology of Spirit ......................................................................111 Notes ...............................................................121 References ...........................................................121 I. Introduction Geschlechtsdifferenz in Hegel’s Encyclopedia: a systematic approach Few if any scholars have acknowledged Hegel as a feminist. But it is easily forgotten how like many of the aspirations projected by feminist theories of sexual difference, Hegel’s work presents the consummate relationship between man and woman as a relationship between two equal but different beings. Patricia Mills calls this “the ideal relationship of identity-in-difference between man and woman” (Mills 1996, p. 63). In the Phenomenology, this ideal relationship is to be found only between brother and sister, which is for Hegel a bond of rest, equilibrium and blood, a bond devoid of desire. In the less discussed texts of the Encyclopedia system, the problem of the ideal relationship between the sexes does not arise as such, a very interesting fact in itself. And yet in the Encyclopedia books marriage is the relationship laying claim to reciprocal “recognition” (broadly construed) and symmetry between man and woman. Marriage in Hegel’s texts is not, however, all it’s cracked up to be; from the earlier work by scholars such as Mills to the more recent work of such thinkers as Elaine Miller and Alison Stone, the critiques by feminist readers of Hegel have clearly demonstrated how Hegel’s account of sex difference (Geschlectsdifferenz) depicts a less than ideal relationship between the two sexes (for Hegel, there are only two sexes), even by Hegel’s own standards. However, almost all of the feminist critiques of Hegel concentrate on his accounts of the family in the Phenomenology and in the Philosophy of Right, on the spiritual accounts of sex difference. While some scholars like Miller and Stone have incorporated relevant sections of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature into their feminist readings, none to my knowledge treat the Philosophy of Nature extensively in this regard, and none treat the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic in their own right, on the topic of sex difference. Moreover, none to my knowledge have considered sex difference in Hegel from a systematic point of view, together in its logical, natural, and spiritual aspects. If only in outline, this is how I propose to consider sex difference in Hegel in this dissertation, throughout its iterations in logic, nature and spirit, using the Encyclopedia and the related works (with an appendix addressing the Phenomenology). Not only does this comprehensive approach have the advantage of deepening and broadening our understanding of the widely held feminist conclusion, that despite Hegel’s claims he does not offer a viable account of the ideal “identity-in-difference” relation between man and woman. This approach also requires us to grapple with some of the most interesting and tricky problems in Hegel scholarship at large, such as the question of the “transitions” between logic and nature and between nature and spirit: in order to understand the relationship between the moments of logical sex difference, natural sex difference, and spiritual sex difference, we must first interpret more generally the relationship between the three primary moments of Hegel’s entire system, logic, nature, and spirit. In the first part, I establish that sex difference is a logical determination for Hegel in the logic texts and that conceptual sex difference anticipates animal sex difference in the Philosophy of Nature. I discuss the significance of this fact looking forward to the implications for reading the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit, the second and third books of the Encyclopedia outline. In the second part, I summarize Hegel’s accounts of sex difference and its analogue in organic nature in the plant nature and in the animal organism. I point out that Hegel did not deduce plant life in his speculative logic, and I show why this is important. In the last part, I argue that there is no co-equal, adult feminine counterpart to man in love and marriage in Philosophy of Spirit and the related sections of Philosophy of Right. This is because despite Hegel’s intentions the relationship between man and woman is not the ethical culmination of the connection between two differently sexed but “equal” animals. Rather, the sex relation between man and woman is analogous to the relationship between animal and plant, a relationship of consumer to the consumed and (self-) sacrificed. As it turns out in light of the prerequisite consideration of the logic and nature texts, the sex relation in its spiritual aspect is not only one of two incompatibly different beings, but also and moreover it is a relationship that Hegel did not properly deduce, even on his own terms, in the first place. References Mills, Patricia J. 1996. Hegel's Antigone. In Feminist Interpretations of G.W.F. Hegel, edited by Patricia J. Mills. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 5 II. Sexual Difference and Development in Hegel's Encyclopedia in their Logical, Natural, and Spiritual Aspects “...and in common with him he nurtures the newborn; such people, therefore, have much more to share than do the parents of human children, and have a firmer bond of friendship, because the children in whom they have a share are more beautiful and more immortal” (Plato, Symposium, Diotima’s Speech, pg. 57 209c). “What got me by during that period was conceiving of the history of philosophy as a kind of ass-fuck, or, what amounts to the same thing, an immaculate conception. I imagined myself approaching an author from behind and giving him a child that would indeed be his but would nonetheless be monstrous.” (Deleuze, “I Have Nothing to Admit,” pg. 12). “Stirner descends from Hegel, he is haunted by the author of The Phenomenology of Spirit and he cannot stand it...he does not comprehend Hegel as well as another one of the descendants, guess who. The latter, just as persecuted by the shadow of their great father who comes back every night, ready also to betray him or to avenge him