Hegel's Critique of the Third Attitude to Objectivity

CHAPTER TWELVE HEGEL’S CRITIQUE OF THE THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY—ITS RELATION TO ORGANIZATION I see the dialectic flow in the third attitude to objectivity from a critique of the one-sidedness of the Intuitionalists to organizational responsibility. —Dunayevskaya, Dec. 8, 1986 I. Introduction: The Three Attitudes to Objectivity Despite Lenin’s preference for some of the Smaller Logic’s (Encyclopedia Logic) formulations in his Hegel Notebooks, particularly in relation to the fĳinal two chapters of the Science of Logic, he did not make excerpts or com- ments on the three Attitudes or “Positions (Attitudes) of Thought with Respect to Objectivity” that Hegel had developed for the extensively enlarged second edition of the Encyclopaedia (1827). Nor did Lenin include a listing of the Attitudes in the brief contents listing of the smaller Logic he wrote in 1915. For Dunayevskaya, these Attitudes to Objectivity, particularly the Third Attitude, Intuitionism, would loom large in her treatment of the Hegelian dialectic. She discerned that the Intuitionism that Hegel described histori- cally and critiqued strongly with respect to the writings of Friedrich Jacobi, was of more than historical interest. In 1961, she had written “Notes on the Encyclopaedia Logic” that included commentary on the Attitudes to Objectivity. In the 1970s, she had developed a political-philosophic critique of Mao Zedong based in part on Hegel’s analysis of Intuitionism. In 1986, while working on “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy,” she would write: “This addition to the [Smaller] Logic—the Third Attitude to Objectivity—I see in a totally new way.” (Dunayevskaya, 2002: 331) This “totally new way” centered on what she saw as a Hegel’s contrast of the faith of Intuitionism as expressed by Jacobi’s philosophy resting only on personal revelation, whereas the faith of Christianity rested on the authority of the Church, an organization expressing a doctrine, “a copious body of objective truth, a system of knowledge.” A body of ideas, was medi- ated, was found to have a concrete organizational expression. 280 chapter twelve We have been exploring whether the Hegelian dialectic is an organization of thought whose fullest, most concrete expression/realization gives birth to and encompasses actual organization. One further way to probe this question is through examining the Attitudes to Objectivity in the Smaller Logic, using the lens of Dunayevskaya’s commentary as our guide. The three Attitudes to Objectivity were formulated in 1827, after Hegel had written his major works Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Science of Logic (1812–1816), and the fĳirst edition of the Encyclopedia (1817) with its Logic, and Philosophies of Nature and Spirit. Only then, (following commentary/critique of his earlier work and further contemporary develop- ment of philosophic thought in Germany), did he chose to present the range of previous philosophic thought in summation form as three attitudes to objectivity at the same time as he presented an expanded second edition of the Encyclopedia. Such compression of thought surely came from profound comprehension of the themes at issue. The First Attitude to Objectivity, termed metaphysics, Hegel called “the naïve way of proceeding … unconscious of the antithesis of thinking within and against itself.” (Hegel, 1991: ¶ 26) It encompassed pre-Kantian philosophy, “from faith and abstract understanding through scholasti- cism, dogmatism, and metaphysics.” (Dunayevskaya, “Notes on the Smaller Logic from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” Dunayevskaya: 2000: 80) Hegel did not see this attitude as only in the historical past, “for, on its own account, it is always present as the way in which the mere understanding views the ob-jects of reason.” (Hegel, 1991: ¶ 27) It is through critique of this fĳirst Attitude that we are at the same time given a glimpse of what will be known as the dialectical attitude. In treat- ing Cosmology with its conception of freedom and necessity merely as an absolute antithesis, Hegel posed a far richer relation of the two: “A freedom that has no necessity within it, and a mere necessity without freedom, are determinations that are abstract and hence untrue. Freedom is essentially concrete, eternally determinate within itself and thus neces- sary at the same time.” As opposed to “merely external necessity,” Hegel found “a genuinely inner necessity, for that is freedom.” (¶ 35) Freedom animates Hegel’s magisterial philosophic journey. In the Second Attitude to Objectivity Hegel treats fĳirst Empiricism and then Critical Philosophy (Kantianism). Hegel opened his discussion by giving empiricism credit for putting “a concrete content as opposed to the abstract theories of the understanding” (¶ 37): “[W]hat is true must be in actuality and must be there for our perception.” (¶ 38).

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