A common feature of the German idealists was the reluctance to accept the limits of knowledge imposed by Kant.Footnote 2 This reluctance was accompanied by an exploration of the significance certain higher, non-discursive forms of knowledge could have for philosophy. The aim was to surpass the Kantian dualism of the theoretical and practical perspective, which implied going beyond the constraints of discursive knowledge. It was Kant, however, who formulated the ideas of higher knowledge that became important for the German idealists: Intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding. Fichte based his philosophy on the intellectual intuition of the I and Schelling applied it to nature. The pinnacle was reached as Hegel developed ‘absolute knowledge’ into an elaborate, seemingly all-encompassing, philosophical system.
On one account, Hegel's efforts of working out a system were in fact an attempt at doing philosophy from ‘a God's eye view’, a view beyond human finitude.Footnote 3 Hegel is seen as an ally of Spinoza and basically a traditional metaphysical philosopher.Footnote 4 On the other end of the interpretative scale we have the ‘normative Hegelians’Footnote 5 who avoid metaphysics as far as possible, in accordance with their deflationist intentions and naturalist inclinations: ‘Spirit’ is to be understood as nothing more than the complex structure of normativity that we call society.Footnote 6
Recently, certain interpretations have tried to establish Hegel as a philosopher who in fact tried to go beyond Kantian limits of knowledge, while at the same time avoiding the pitfall of dogmatic metaphysics.Footnote 7 What exactly it means to go beyond the limits of knowledge is unclear. For Kant it meant claiming knowledge about the thing in itself beyond appearances. Does Hegel make such a claim? As I will show, Hegel only claims access to the ‘in itself’ (without ‘the thing’) of reality, its basic structure as found in pure thinking. Understanding exactly what lies in this claim is the first aspect of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel.
In Eckart Förster's Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, the most thorough-going and original study of the question of non-discursive knowledge in post-Kantian idealism to appear recently, Hegel is understood as a philosopher who realized Kant's quest for a scientific philosophy. This was done by applying the method of intuitive understanding to the development of the shapes of consciousness in history. Though there may be problems in Hegel's presentation of this development,Footnote 8 Förster claims that the form of thinking on which it is based brings philosophy to its end.Footnote 9 Furthermore, Förster's reading opens up again the possibility of interpreting ‘spirit’ as something much more than society. Indeed, in Förster's account, by studying the development of consciousness based on the intuitive understanding, the human being can come to recognize the workings of a supersensible, spiritual reality.Footnote 10
According to James Kreines, Hegel does claim that we can know things in themselves and the absolute, but this knowledge is not a form of divine knowledge; it is knowledge of nature (natural kinds and laws)Footnote 11 and of ourselves as part of a hierarchy of being ranging from basic mechanical processes to complex teleological organisms.Footnote 12 In contrast to Förster, Kreines thinks that spirit has nothing to do with a supersensible dimension beyond normal, human cognition. Kreines’ view is consistent with Sally Sedgwick's recent interpretation, which stresses that although Hegel does claim access to an intuitive understanding, this does not involve a reference to the supersensible.Footnote 13 Hence though it is agreed that Hegel's philosophy makes use of non-discursive forms of knowledge, there is disagreement about whether or not this implies that one claims access to knowledge of a supersensible reality.
I think that Hegel indeed claimed such knowledge (as a knowledge of pure thinking, the ‘in itself’), but struggled with the question of how to connect it with the knowledge of nature and actual spirit. Knowledge of pure thinking is knowledge of objects generated by thinking itself and results in the explication of a synthetic universal. Knowledge of externality (of objects in space and time) relate to objects that are given and proceeds according to the principles of analytic universals. This concerns the second aspect of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel's philosophy: How do you connect the higher knowledge of pure thinking with a knowledge of externality? My suggestion is that Hegel's answer is: you can't—at least not in any satisfactory way. Rather, in the end, truth is reached by going into pure thinking, leaving all finite forms behind. This, however, I claim, is a break with the principles of pure thinking as found in Hegel's logic. So Hegel is inconsistent here. In my view, Goethe—as interpreted by Förster—provides an intriguing way of conceiving how Hegel could have better connected the higher knowledge he developed in his logic with the knowledge of nature, and thus how he could have avoided having to retreat into pure thinking, finding truth only in ‘the realm of shadows’.Footnote 14
I will make my case in three steps: First, in section 1, I will clarify the meaning and role of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding in Kant's transcendental philosophy. Then, in section 2, I will investigate Hegel's appropriation of these forms of knowledge, particularly in his logic. Since I believe that the logic is based on a form of knowledge that combines aspects of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding, I diverge from Förster's interpretation, which assigns intuitive understanding to Hegel (as well as Goethe) and intellectual intuition to Fichte and Schelling. Finally, in section 3, I will show how there is a discrepancy between what Hegel should have aimed for with his appropriation of the higher forms of knowledge in Kant, and what he actually realized in his system. Section 1 and 2 deal foremost with the first aspect of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel's philosophy, namely what kind of higher knowledge claims he actually makes. Section 3 deals with the second aspect: How do you connect higher, speculative knowledge of thinking with knowledge of empirical reality?
I. Intellectual Intuition and Intuitive Understanding in Kant's Transcendental Philosophy
Here I will spell out the different forms of higher knowledge in Kant. I will mainly follow Förster, but I diverge from his view on specific points. Kant distinguishes between human and divine forms of knowledge in order to clarify what is the specific human way of knowing. Although we can conceive of other forms of knowledge, we cannot know whether or not there exist any beings (angels or gods) that actually know in a different way than we do. However, the subject of higher knowledge in Kant is not so simple and one-dimensional. Kant speaks of different forms of higher knowledge. Some of the forms of higher knowledge seem to lie not too far away from what a human being could possibly achieveFootnote 15—at least that was what the German idealists thought. Indeed, it is not so easy to clearly identify the different forms of higher knowledge in Kant.Footnote 16
Kant speaks of a form of intuition that is intellectual, which is to say that it is not like ours, namely sensible. To have an intellectual intuition means to have an immediate or direct access to objects as they are in themselves beyond appearances.Footnote 17 Human knowledge does not involve such immediacy; it is a step-by-step process through which concepts are related to sensible intuitions. Though sensible intuitions possess a certain immediacy, the process of knowledge through which concepts arise requires work on the part of the knower. This is what is meant by the observation that human knowledge is discursive.Footnote 18
If we had access to intellectual intuition as knowledge of things in themselves, we would not have to presuppose, from a practical standpoint, that we have a free will. We would be able to know it theoretically as well.Footnote 19 Intellectual intuition would give us an understanding of the way teleological and mechanical systems interact or exist in harmony.Footnote 20 When we speak of intellectual intuition this way, it seems to hold the possibility open that human beings could in principle attain such knowledge. However, Kant also speaks of intellectual intuition in the sense of a capacity to create or generate objects intellectually that are immediately present as intuitions.Footnote 21 For such an intuition, possibility (thought) and actuality (being) are one. In contrast, human intuition, although presenting something to us immediately, is still derived. It depends on objects being given to it. Kant adds that intellectual intuition, in the sense of a capacity to produce real objects through thought only, belongs to God, and in fact, Kant denies that we can have access to intellectual intuition.Footnote 22
By now we have distinguished two forms of intellectual intuition: (a) A knowing-seeing of things as they are in themselves and (b) a capacity for generating intuitable, real objects through thinking alone (i.e., a unity of possibility and actuality).Footnote 23
Kant also presents another conception of higher form of knowledge, which he calls intuitive understanding. What is characteristic for the intuitive understanding is that its concepts are synthetic universals.Footnote 24 In contrast, for discursive beings, concepts are analytic universals. Analytic universals contain their species under them, forming a hierarchy of concepts with common and distinguishing markers. The synthetic universal contains its species in it. This has some strange consequences—the most problematic one being that it implies a contradiction. I will go further into this later on. For now it can be noted that I think it is Hegel's dialectics that offer a way to answer to the problems that arise when considering the synthetic universal. In other words, Hegel thinks we can access an intuitive understanding, but this requires that we come up with a new way of conceiving thinking.
In one instance Kant describes intuitive understanding as a form of cognition that has nature as a whole as its object and therefore must be conceived as a ‘cause of the world’.Footnote 25 As I will argue, this is most likely not what Hegel had in mind when he came up with a way of appropriating Kant's idea of an intuitive understanding. So we should distinguish between intuitive understanding as (a) a form of knowledge that deals with synthetic universals and (b) a form of ‘knowledge’ that caused the world to exist. Again, these need not in principle be thought of as mutually excluding. Indeed, the intuitive understanding as a cause of the world might have to proceed according to the principles of a synthetic universal. Still, being ‘cause of the world’ seems to be something more powerful than knowing according to the principles of synthetic universality.
In this way we arrive at an account of higher knowledge in Kant that is similar to Förster's.Footnote 26 To summarize:
1. Intellectual intuition is:
(a) An intuition that allows for knowledge of things as they are in themselves;
(b) A way of knowing where being and thinking are not separate.
2. Intuitive understanding is:
(a) Knowledge according to synthetic universality;
(b) The knowledge that is also the cause of the world.
The strongest conception is 2(b). If 1(b) is interpreted to be similar to 2(b), then those together make out the strongest forms; if we had access to them, we would be fully fledged creators of realities and worlds.
Förster's claim is that Fichte and Schelling based their philosophies on the notion of intellectual intuition that they found in Kant, while Hegel based his philosophy on a development of intuitive understanding. More precisely, Fichte and Schelling relied on intellectual intuition in the sense of a unity of being and thinking, not as a non-sensuous intuition of how things are in themselves. This is an expression of a certain epistemic modesty; we can go beyond Kantian limits, but we are still finite knowers.
I agree with Förster that none of the German idealists laid claim to have a form of knowledge identical to God's knowledge. There are ways of conceiving of non-godlike intellectual intuition and a non-godlike intuitive understanding. However, like Förster, I do not think that intellectual intuition can be neatly sorted on the side of Fichte and Schelling, while intuitive understanding belongs to Hegel. In the following I will rather claim that Hegel's logic involves both a form of intellectual intuition (a weak version of a unity of being and thinking that reveals the ‘in itself’ of appearances) and a form of intuitive understanding (a knowing that relies on conceiving universals as synthetic).
II. The Higher Forms of Knowledge in Hegel's Logic
Four conceptions of higher knowledge that have their origin in Kant were outlined above. Here I will consider each one in turn in relation to Hegel's logic, following the same order as outlined above (2.1 corresponds to 1(a), 2.2 corresponds to 1(b) and so on), before I suggest a unified conception of higher knowledge in Hegel's philosophy (2.5).
II.I The Logic as a Revelation of ‘The in Itself’
All of the German idealists reacted against the idea of a ‘thing in itself’ found in Kant. Paraphrasing Jacobi, one could say that in transcendental philosophy one must say something about the thing in itself, but at the same time one can't. Hegel is on the one hand completely dismissive of the notion of a thing in itself, repeatedly calling it an empty abstraction,Footnote 27 but he also claims that his Science of Logic exactly is a presentation of the thing in itself in a certain sense. Hegel dismisses the notion of a thing in itself, but believes to be able to give a presentation of it as ‘the in itself’,Footnote 28 i.e., the pure determinations of thinking.
For Kant, the thing in itself is a something that is independent of our sensibility.Footnote 29 Considered according to the ‘table of nothing’ it is a concept that completely lacks a corresponding intuition (ens rationis).Footnote 30 Therefore we can neither deny, nor affirm that it is really a possible object. However, we seem to have no problem speaking about it, so in some basic sense it is ‘a something’. In one place, Kant treats the concept of ‘something’ (Etwas) as the most abstract of all concepts.Footnote 31 Its opposite is nothing, with which it has nothing in common, and hence the distinction between something and nothing is basic; they are not united in a higher concept. In KdrV, however, Kant presents another view, namely that it is the concept of an object in general that is the highest concept.Footnote 32
I will not attempt to decide on which view best represents Kant here, but considerations like these provide a way of getting right into Hegel's logic. Hegel would agree that something is a more basic determination of pure thinking than any of the other ones Kant mentions in his table of categories. However, Hegel believes that it is the task of a radical critical philosophy to investigate the forms of thought in themselves (i.e., independently of how thoughts stand in relation to empirical objects). Such a critical investigation will reveal, among other things, that something isn't the most basic thought possible, but rather that of being. Something is more determinate than being; the former implies a reference to a something, as opposed to something else. Being would be the common, underlying field of something and something else, a field that is neither determinately this nor that.
However, one of Hegel's fundamental points is that pure being cannot in any orderly way be separated from nothing. Both notions are in a sense ‘somethings’ that can only be determined in relationship to the other (similar to how no one can be a daughter without having a mother). In fact, both determinations form a unity, becoming, out of which determinate being, something, arises. Something is a more concrete determination than pure being, it is this-as-not-that and therefore contains the determinations from which it arose (being and nothing). This is the way that Hegel believes it is possible to go deeper into the intelligible structure of what truly is, the ‘in itself’.
One needs to bring to mind that in his logic, Hegel isn't operating within the framework of what he calls the ‘opposition of consciousness’ (another term for empirical consciousness). What is opposed within empirical consciousness is simply concepts and intuitions. Though they can be united, they stem from two independent faculties, which is the reason for the discursivity of knowledge, our inability to know things in themselves. Hegel believes to operate on a level of knowledge beyond the opposition of consciousness in his logic. But this does not mean that he believes that he has revealed what the transcendental thing in itself is. Hegel is convinced that any philosophy that relies on a conception of an absolute beyond cognition will either succumb to skeptical objections or simply be inconsistent. Consequently, he seeks to develop a new conception of knowledge that does not rely on or refer to an absolute beyond.
The first mature example of this in Hegel is The Phenomenology of Spirit. Here Hegel seeks to discover the ‘in itself’ of human theoretical and practical endeavors, which in its pure form is ‘absolute knowledge, a ‘knowing of knowing’ as a dialectical structure. We can come to know what this structure is since we are ourselves part of it; there is a continuity of the knower and what is known. On such an account, Hegel does not want to say anything about reality but rather believes philosophy should be a meta-reflection on our already established practices of knowing and doing. We could interpret Hegel to mean that philosophy shouldn't concern itself with receptive or empirical knowledge; at most it should concern itself with the connection of different levels of scientific investigation of the empirical world. Sometimes Hegel seems to think that this is the way to understanding philosophy—famously, the Owl of Minerva flies at dawn. However, I believe Hegel is ambivalent here. On many occasions he is prescriptive when it comes to how to conceive of empirical objects. He cannot restrain himself from ‘meddling’ with how objects are conceived by discursive consciousness. And this is done on the basis of the analysis of the structure of knowledge, the dialectical method, which he develops in his logic. In a sense, Hegel can therefore be charged with thinking that he knows ‘how things really are’, that he thinks that he is in possession of an intellectual intuition of things as they are in themselves. I will return to this in section 3.
II.II The Logic as a Unity of Thinking and Being
Hegel's logic could be seen as an attempt at developing a logic that by its inherent nature presents a unity of possibility and actuality, of thinking and being. This corresponds to the second sense of intellectual intuition in Kant described above, namely the unity of possibility and actuality. Intellectual intuition in this sense is a form of cognition that generates the object of its own knowledge. In §17 of his Enz., Hegel compares other sciences to the science of logic and states: ‘But what we have here is the free act of thinking putting itself at the standpoint where it is for its own self, producing its own ob-ject for itself thereby, and giving it to itself.’Footnote 33 Not only does thinking generate an object, it also presents the object that it has brought forth it to itself. Since the object is generated by thinking, the whole process in essence consists of thinking presenting itself to itself. By generating objects and studying them, thinking investigates itself and comes to recognize its own structure and movement. In its purity, this is the process of knowledge represented by Hegel's logic.
By conceiving logic as the investigation of the products of thinking in a way that does not presuppose a basic distinction between possibility and actuality, Hegel breaks with certain traditional ways of understanding what logic is about.
Firstly, Hegel maintains that logic is never formal; it always has content. By formal logic we usually mean logic that leaves aside any consideration of the specific nature of the content of the matter at hand. We want, for example, to clarify the necessary connections between the elements of inferences. Formal logic cannot tell us what the truth is, only which structures of inference are truth-preserving. Hegel points out that logic indeed has a content of its own, for instance the so-called ‘laws of thinking’ or the specific forms of truth-preserving inferences. Furthermore, for Hegel, the traditional laws of thinking can in a certain sense be said to be ‘untrue’ and we should therefore not take them for granted uncritically in a process of developing philosophical knowledge. Logic should not be seen as ontologically neutral. On Hegel's view it is, for example, of great significance if we only allow for abstract identity (‘everything is what it is and not another thing’) and not speculative identity (the ‘identity of identity and non-identity’). Only the latter allows for an organic conception of nature and spirit.Footnote 34
Secondly, Hegel believes that the conception of a logic that is purely formal rests on three invalid notions, namely that
(i) there exists a world that is separate from thinking and that thinking receives its content from this world,
(ii) thinking is somehow ‘less real’ than objects and
(iii) thinking has to submit itself to the object in order to be true.Footnote 35
Here Hegel takes a stance against the common notion that truth is achieved when thinking modifies itself in such a way that it corresponds to an object that is given to it. Hegel maintains that it must be the other way around. The object has to correspond to what thinking discovers as truth. Objects are untrue when they fail to correspond to the standard of thinking. This in a sense is a radicalization of Kant's Copernican revolution. Hegel's logic as a whole can be understood as an uncovering of the structure of truth, resulting in the concept of the concept, or the idea, in which thinking and being are one.
Thirdly, Hegel points out that if we think of form and content as fundamentally separate, the end result is that the object really becomes inaccessible for thinking.Footnote 36 When we consider thinking as something that has to submit itself to the object, we discover that we don't get a grip on reality, that there is no way of adequately representing what is outside thinking.Footnote 37 Here Hegel differs from both Fichte and Schelling, who insist that there must be something outside of thinking. As Fichte notes in a letter to Schelling, ‘The absolute itself, however, is neither being nor knowledge, nor is it identity or the indifference of both. Rather it is exactly—the absolute—and every subsequent word is wrong.’Footnote 38 Schelling would later on become a representative of a similar view with his doctrine of the ‘unprethinkable being’. But this isn't necessarily only a point about the thing in itself or the absolute. In Mind and World, McDowell opts for a Hegelian version of the infinity of thought, claiming that ‘spontaneity is inextricably implicated in deliverances of receptivity’,Footnote 39 because otherwise, if we suppose that there is a world fundamentally separate from thinking, we cannot give a good explanation of how the world can put any constraints on a cognitive process.
But what, more precisely, is contained in the thesis that Hegel's logic presents a unity of being and thinking? It is, of course, not the outrageous claim that one can, from thoughts alone, create real, empirical objects. Rather, the logic is an absolute (in the sense of separate) creation, consisting of the self-knowledge of thinking. In it thinking investigates itself, its own, pure creations. Through this investigation, and through the self-movement of the determinations of pure thinking, the objective structure (dialectical connection) inherent in these determinations is revealed. This objective structure is real insofar as it is necessary. The objects of pure thinking, of spontaneity, present thinking with their own laws and principles of connection. So although thinking creates objects, these objects reveal a nature of their own, a nature which is nothing other than the deeper structure of thinking itself. The generation of the objects of pure thinking in the logic can therefore be understood as, firstly, the creation of abstract objects (‘thought-seeds’, such as pure being), and, secondly, as the revelation of the deeper structure of such objects, which is comparable to how a seed grows into a plant. The objects take on a life of their own and develop into more concrete determinations (becoming, something, etc., ending with the idea). The process of uncovering the structure and movement of pure thinking involves both spontaneity and receptivity, but at the same time it never really leaves the sphere of spontaneity. This leads to the problem of how to understand the connection between the thought-determinations of the logic and empirical reality. Again, this is a problem I will return to in section 3.
II.III The Concepts of the Intuitive Understanding
Whereas the concepts produced by the intuitive understanding are synthetic universals, those produced by discursive understanding are analytic. As Kant states, the difference between the two is that the discursive universality is a ‘unity within many’ while the intuitive universality consists of ‘many within one’.Footnote 40 For Kant, discursive understanding brings forth universals through a process of reflection.Footnote 41 Intuitive understanding immediately intuits the whole and its parts. The act of accessing wholes that contain parts in it is a feature of intuition as such.Footnote 42 When we consider, for instance, the concept of a living being discursively, we cannot deduce how many species of living beings are possible, nor how many species exist. If we had perfect access to the intuitive universality ‘living being’ we would be able to do that.
Analytic universals are such that they contain their species under them, rather than in them.Footnote 43 The reason for this is that otherwise a contradiction will arise. If we consider the concept ‘living being’, we could say that its species all are characterized by having a metabolism. ‘Metabolism’ is the common marker of all species and therefore belongs to the universal concept of a living being. The concept of a living being can be divided into those beings that are earthbound (have roots) and those that are not, and thus can move about freely. The former are plants, the latter animals. If the species were located within the genus, we would have to both affirm and deny the differentia specifica (in this case earthbound) of the genus, which is a contradiction. To avoid this we order concepts into higher and lower. The common marker can be said of both the higher and lower concepts, but the differentiating marker can only be said of either of the lower concepts. When we speak of living beings abstractly, we only have the common marker in mind. When speaking determinately about this or that living being, we have both the common marker and the differentia specifica in mind. Thus higher concepts contain less in them, i.e., they are poorer in content than lower concepts; a higher concept is more abstract, a lesser concept more concrete.
Then we have the case of synthetic universals, which contains its species in it. If we conceive of ‘living being’ as a synthetic universal, we would say not only that it contains beings that have metabolism but also those that are earthbound as well as those that are not. We could consider the parts of the concept separately, but we would then be considering them in abstraction from the whole that it belongs to. In fact, when we recognize something as a part of a synthetic universal we would also recognize its relation to all other beings of its same kind. Only through an abstraction would I be able to recognize parts as parts; I would have to suppress the relation the parts have to the whole. In other words, the synthetic universal is both richer and higher when compared to its parts.
However, the synthetic universal seems to involve exactly the contradiction mentioned above: When we synthetically think ‘living being’, we think something that is both earthbound and not earthbound at the same time. Here, one could say, the limits of our ability to grasp the synthetic universal from the discursive standpoint shows itself. We seemingly cannot grasp what it means to intellectually grasp ‘many in one’; we cannot grasp how parts (species) can be contained within the whole (genus) and be inseparable from it. For sensible intuition, it is different. In an intuition of space the parts are spatially arranged, which simply means that they can exist side by side within the same whole without excluding (‘contradicting’) the other parts,Footnote 44 and we intuit directly how different parts belong to the same whole.
However, the case can also be made that we indeed would need something like a synthetic universal in order to have real knowledge through concepts. What justifies the claim that two different attributes belong to the same thing? How can they belong to the same if they are different? It seems that we would have to be able to proceed from the one attribute to another in order to account for their unity; describing parts fully would imply describing the whole.
So it seems that we need something like the synthetic universal in order to account for the unity of things, but also that this would lead us into a contradiction. This is a problem that Hegel seeks to solve through dialectics. There is clear textual evidence that Hegel was aware that he was trying to formulate a conception of a synthetic universal. In one place he specifically states that the determinate negation, in the sense of a unity of opposites, is a concept that is both higher and richer than the preceding determinations that the unity develops from.Footnote 45 Hegel also calls logical reason itself that which contains all abstract determinations in it, that which holds them together and makes out their ‘massive, absolute-concrete unity’.Footnote 46 This has been a reason for claiming that Hegel's dialectics is basically flawed; it implies a break with the traditional understanding of the relationship between the content and extension of concepts.Footnote 47 I will return to this issue again shortly.
II.IV The Intuitive Understanding as ‘Cause of the World’
Though there is clear evidence that Hegel sought to develop Kant's conception of a synthetic universal in his logic, it is harder to find evidence that Hegel thought of the intelligible structures presented in his logic as somehow the cause of the world. One might cite the grandiose claim that Hegel makes in the introduction of the logic, namely that the logic is ‘the exhibition of God, how He is in His eternal nature before the creation of the world and a finite spirit’.Footnote 48 Even if we take this claim literally, Hegel does not say that thoughts cause the world. Rather, it is a matter of God's thoughts before the creation of nature and finite spirit; the act of creation is separate from the thoughts concerning it.
If, however, the claim isn't meant to be taken literally, what does it mean? Arguably, Hegel could be understood as an Aristotelian here. What is first in the order of explanation is not the same as that which first in the order of existence. Thoughts are primary when it comes to explaining the world, but have no ‘ontological force’; what pertains to the existence of the world cannot be deduced from thought. This is how I think we should take Hegel's claim that reason (νοũς) or spirit can be understood as ‘the cause of the world’.Footnote 49 Still, as I have already indicated, I don't think Hegel is completely clear on this issue. I will return to this issue in section 3, after I have given an account of how I think Hegel's logic can be understood as a unity of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding.
II.V The Unity of Intellectual Intuition and Intuitive Understanding in Hegel's Logic
Here I will spell out the how I think Hegel's logic can be understood as a unity of the modest form of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding outlined above.
As already stated, Hegel's logic consists of thinking's investigation of itself. This investigation consists of pure thinking generating pure objects that reveal an objective, developmental structure, which is also the structure of the source that generated the objects, namely thinking itself. As such it is a form of thinking that involves ‘reality’ in the sense of a minimal form of objectivity, which is also fully transparent to thinking. Reality and concept are one. The relationship of concept and reality that is established by the intellectual intuition is understood within a structure of determination that resembles the structure of the synthetic universal of the intuitive understanding. Since a synthetic universal is contradictory, one must either reject it or make sense of how the contradiction is not destructive.
The key to understanding Hegel's appropriation of the idea of a synthetical universal in Kant is to recognize that Hegel does not understand concepts as a collection of attributes, but as a relation between moments. Pure logical thinking in the Hegelian sense begins with pure immediacy, a universal that is determined through other determinations posited by thinking alone, which then particularizes itself. This particularization consists, firstly, of a new determination being brought forth from the universal as the continuation of the universal itself, and, secondly, of this new determination being opposed to the original universal.
The opposite that is brought forth is then united with the original determination in a new determination. There is a semblance of determining concepts through markers here in that the immediate determination is characterized through other determinations, but since the meaning shifts, and this shift of meaning is taken as an expression of the deeper meaning of the determination, the similarity is only superficial: Opposite determinations turn out to express the same. Hegel understands this as a process that both brings forth a contradiction and resolves it in a new unity of the preceding determinations. Within this process one can identify certain stages (moments): The original determination, the shifting of opposites into each other, and the unity of the two. These moments are, however, when they are taken on their own, abstract, and demand a further consideration of the way they relate to each other.
When considered within the third moment, the initial two moments are ‘ideal’.Footnote 50 In the third moment the separateness of the two initial moments is gone, though their separateness still has a bearing on the determination of the third. For instance, becoming contains the moments of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be, which emphasize either being or nothing as part of a more complex determination involving both. Consequently, understanding a concept as ‘higher and richer’ depends on making sense of the way particular determinations can be unified though speculative thinking.Footnote 51
I believe, however, descriptions of concepts as higher or lower is insignificant or redundant when it comes to Hegel's logic. They express nothing of the inner workings of dialectics. Such terms rather give an introductory indication of how the dialectical way of thinking differs from the traditional one.
Here I have left out of consideration the way Hegel's logic is in a sense also an attempt at bringing together discursivity and higher forms of knowledge. This is already a well-researched subject and I have not challenged the standard view here.Footnote 52 What I have attempted is a clarification of the role intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding plays in Hegel's thinking. To summarize with reference to the different forms of higher knowledge in Kant outlined in the previous section: Intellectual intuition is, in Hegel's philosophy, particularly the logic, a revelation of ‘the (thing) in itself’ (1a), but only as the intelligible Ansich (i.e., not as a supersensible thing in itself). This Ansich is the unity possibility and actuality in pure thinking (1b), which, as a structure, is an explication of the synthetic universal of the intuitive understanding (2a), but not at the same time a ‘cause of the world’ (2b).
Pure thinking begins as an inner or supersensible intuition,Footnote 53 and as such is a form of higher knowledge. Its material is at first abstractly universal, but develops into a synthetic universal. Grasping the synthetic universal could also be said to require a new insight into a previously developed material, a mediated immediacy, and requires a transition from the principles of the understanding to that of speculative reason. The turning point of dialectics into speculation, where opposites become one, can be understood as a successor to religious or mystical insight, which is usually taken to be ineffable. For Hegel, however, the ‘ineffable’ is the speculative, and, though the speculative is related to higher, religious content, it still represents higher knowledge; it is a function of thinking and not representation. This concludes my treatment of the first aspect of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel. Now I turn to the second aspect, i.e., the problem of connecting the higher knowledge of the logic with empirical reality.
III. Logic and Reality
There are two general ways of understanding the connection between Hegel's logic and empirical reality. The first one, which can be called the epistemological interpretation, says that Hegel's logic presents principles that apply only to our practice of knowledge. With regards to empirical objects, the logic at most presents regulative principles.Footnote 54 The second one is the ontological interpretation, according to which Hegel claims to present us with knowledge of natural kinds and laws.Footnote 55 The problem for the epistemological interpretation is that Hegel seems to present constitutive principles in his logic. The problem for the ontological interpretation is that Hegel presents a strong critique of all empirical knowledge.
In many instances it is clear that Hegel prefers certain ways of understanding empirical reality over others, and he does that on the basis of the way he understand how reason works, as explicated in his logic. Here is an example from Hegel's Berlin lectures on metaphysics, where he speaks about colours:
Colour is genus, it is a dampening of brightness and darkness. That is the definition of the genus of colour. Now, the particular colors, the species, arise from the relationship of bright and dark; if something dark is the basis and we cover it with something bright, then we have blue, or, conversely, if something bright is the basis and is covered, then we have yellow. In this way, the differentiation follows from the determination of the genus. If yellow is raised to individuality, it is red, if it is neutralized, it is green. Here there is reason in the division.Footnote 56
Though he doesn't say so explicitly, Hegel is clearly speaking of Goethe's theory of colours here. The particular colours form opposite pairs and can seemingly be deduced from the universal. The key statement is: ‘Here there is reason in the division.’ Certain ways of understanding things are in accordance with reason, others aren't. The Goethean way of understanding colours is an example of a rational understanding of the empirical world. In the Goethean theory, the principle of the differentiation of the species (colours) can be found in the genus itself (which therefore closely resembles a synthetic universal) and the species arise from various constellations of opposites. All of this is very much in agreement with Hegel's exposition of the structure of rationality in the logic. Hence the logic at least gives us a blueprint for our choice of theory. But sometimes Hegel seems to make an even stronger claim. He formulates universal, ontological principles, such as that all finite things have to pass.Footnote 57 Similarly, the doctrine that the conceptual has priority over all given reality suggests that the logic cannot have a purely epistemological significance.Footnote 58
At the same time, Hegel is deeply critical of all knowledge of empirical reality. The critique is that the way we think about empirical objects is ultimately contingent. There is no way of knowing that the identifying markers we select in a process of knowledge really connects up with the essence of the thing we are considering. As Hegel states, even organisms such as fish are, as universals, ‘not bound to any particular aspect of its external existence.’Footnote 59 Our knowledge of organisms will be contingent, since nature itself is highly contingent. The forms of nature cannot be brought into an ‘absolute system.’Footnote 60 But Hegel isn't always consistent here. For instance, he argues in favor of using the teeth and claws of organisms as a starting point of their classification, since these are the parts of the organism that it uses to secure and defend its own subsistence in the world.Footnote 61 Then we have the doctrine that an essence, if it really is an essence, must appear.Footnote 62 Hence we should be able to discover instances of continuity between an essence and its appearance also in empirical objects, given, of course, that they really have an essence.
So, on the one hand Hegel does seem to think that we can discover reason in the world, but, on the other hand, he is ready to dismiss all knowledge of the empirical world as contingent.Footnote 63 How can we understand this?
I propose the following: The dialectical way of understanding things that employs synthetic universals is ultimately only valid insofar as we are dealing with objects of our own creation. On the level of pure thinking, we can have true knowledge since there is no discontinuity between that which appears and the way it appears. We can also have true knowledge of the practices in which we are involved as rational beings, at least insofar as we consider the part of the practice that we ourselves contribute, e.g., our theories about how something is.
The case is more difficult with regards to empirical reality. I think Hegel tries to establish something that could be called ‘rational faith’, by which I mean a faith in the rationality of the world: Our thoughts aren't ultimately disconnected from empirical reality. Hegel sometimes speaks of this as ‘the instinct of reason’.Footnote 64 We continue to reveal more of what truly is even though we keep making mistakes. The ‘otherness’ of nature isn't impenetrable; thinking is exactly a capacity to engage with otherness.Footnote 65 We have to approach nature and empirical reality discursively, but we can be sure that nature does not pose any limit to our understanding that cannot be surpassed.
It follows from this, however, that higher knowledge, i.e., the specific combination of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding that Hegel proposes, is only realized outside of empirical reality. We can have faith that the field of human, empirical existence will lend itself to rational illumination, but we can have no direct and infallible knowledge of any essences ruling natural kinds, history or the world as a whole.Footnote 66
At times Hegel points in the direction of an even deeper ‘between the thought and reality, of an even higher form of knowledge than that of pure, logical thinking. ‘Self-consciousness” is, he states, the ‘existing’, ‘empirically perceivable, pure concept’.Footnote 67 In self-consciousness, the essence of something, the conceptual structure, is immediately and fully present as an intuition. The I as universal and particular is present as one.
However, how nature allows for such an intellectual intuition of the I and how the I can interact with the body, if there are any other such beings besides the human I that can realize their plans in the world, is not something that the German idealists could answer. The main challenge of Kant's philosophy that they tried to tackle—how to unite theoretical and practical reason—therefore stands unresolved. This, I believe, points to the main lack of Hegel's philosophy.
According to the principles of understanding developed by Hegel in his logic, it is clear that ideally, in order to know, one should seek to achieve knowledge of the supersensible ground that unites the human being with the world. This follows from the speculative principle of ‘being with oneself in otherness.’ The idea (which in its concrete form is the I) establishes knowledge through finding itself in otherness; whatever opposes itself to the idea as something different to it is false. The process of knowledge consists of turning whatever presents itself as false into truth. But empirical objects present a ‘great other’ to knowing spirit, an otherness or ‘objecthood’, which it has to leave behind on its way to self-knowledge. The result is the lack of connection between logic and reality. Hegel's strategy in his system is that when an object turns out to inadequately reveal its essence, i.e., when it does not accord to the standards of infinite thinking, the object is left behind—it doesn't become a constituent part of the next determination as is the case in the logic. The connections of the logic propose to be necessary, the connections of the determinations of the Realphilosophie obviously aren't: Being and nothing may necessarily be connected to something, but husband and wife aren't necessarily connected to child, though the latter may represent the unity of marriage.Footnote 68
According to Hegel we cannot come to have real knowledge of the real other of spirit. More precisely, we cannot have direct, immediate and conceptual knowledge of the essences of natural kinds and laws in the same intimate way that we have knowledge of ourselves as self-conscious beings. Again, this leads to a partial realization of the principle of ‘being with oneself in otherness’ of the logic. The idea is in otherness only with itself.Footnote 69 In other words: We can have full rational knowledge only of our own rational activity; philosophy can only adequately consider what we think about being, not the real otherness of being, not empirical reality. According to the logic, we should approach otherness in order to find ourselves in it, but it turns out that we cannot really get beyond ourselves and know essences that are not ourselves. So much for spirit being the whole of reality.
Let us now return to Förster's interpretation. Förster's claim is that Hegel makes use of intuitive understanding in his philosophy, in particular in his understanding of the development of spirit in The Phenomenology of Spirit. In this work Hegel, according to Förster, presents the development of a supersensible spirit, and at the same time brings the history of philosophy to an end.
In contrast, I maintain that the core of Hegel's philosophy, the logic, rests on weak or modest unity of the conceptions of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding found in Kant. With regards to whether or not Hegel believes that there is a supersensible spirit that emerges as actual spirit out of nature and history, I do think that this is closer to the truth than to identify spirit with society. Though it may be the case, as Terry Pinkard has pointed out recently, that ‘Hegel's version of God is more like Aristotle's than that of the Christian tradition’, it does seems clear that Hegel relies on some conception of a supersensible spirit.Footnote 70 However, I do not think that Hegel can in any straightforward way be understood as a representative of traditional onto-theological thinking.Footnote 71 The way Hegel revolutionizes the traditional paradigm of determination has deep consequences for the conception of God or spirit. God is not separate from the becoming of the world and the human being. There is no one controlling the progress of history and evolution from the outside. Rather, God is so deeply embedded within it that whatever telos it is that everything is intrinsically aiming at can only emerge and become present in time. In this sense, God is running history ‘from the inside’, which is to say that actual historical development and the development of God isn't separate.Footnote 72
When Förster claims, however, that Hegel believes that he ends the history of philosophy, I think he goes too far. On the one hand, the textual evidence is not convincing, and on the other, a feature of dialectical thinking is that it dissolves any state of finality as soon as it has gained some foothold. Still, the case Förster makes for Goethe's way of knowing, his way of developing a scientia intuitiva for the organic world, could provide Hegel with the link between logic and reality that I think is missing in his philosophy. Scientia intuitiva consists of knowing an object according to its essence and Spinoza thought that such knowledge is exemplified in geometry. Goethe applied scientiva intuitiva to nature, claiming to have discovered the ‘primal plant’, a spiritual entity that is present in all plants, and from which all possible plants can be derived. Though Hegel appreciates Goethe's theory of colors, he is silent on the idea of a primal plant. Quite possibly this is due to the fact that Hegel has his own view of the organic world. Consequently he seems blind to the possibility Goethe's idea of the primal plant contains, when it comes to connecting reason and spirit with nature: Considering nature according to scientia intuitiva implies knowing nature as if we have created it, i.e., from the inside, in a way similar to how we know pure thinking and other objects of our own creation. The question is whether Goethe's way of knowing would survive Hegel's critique of empirical knowledge. And if it would, if we could come to a knowledge of the primal plant as a spiritual entity, what can we say about the relationship of such natural, spiritual entities to the world spirit? Giving an answer to the question of whether Hegel's view of empirical knowledge poses a critique of Goethe is beyond the scope of this article. Answering whether there is a connection between ‘natural, spiritual entities’ and any ‘world spirit’ is possibly even beyond the scope of the philosophical inquiry pursued in German idealism as a whole.
