At the end of the ‘doctrine of essence’, the second book of his Science of Logic, Hegel summarizes the result of his analysis of substance, causality, and reciprocity in the following way:
‘The truth of necessity is thus freedom, and the truth of substance is the concept—the self-sufficiency that is the repelling of itself from itself into different self-sufficient [moments] and, as this repelling, is identical with itself and, enduring by itself, is this alternating movement only with itself.’ (Enc §158)Footnote 1
This conclusion raises a number of questions: What does it mean that freedom is ‘the truth’ of necessity? Which arguments lead to that conclusion, and do they stand up to reason? Finally, how is this entire argumentation related to the logic of the concept? In this essay, I would like to address these questions against the background of Kant's third antinomy of pure reason. In this way, we can see more clearly where and why Hegel's logic parts company with a much more familiar way of thinking about necessity and freedom. According to the more familiar way, the main question concerning freedom and necessity seems to be the following: Is freedom compatible with causal necessity?—a question that takes the latter as given and the former in need of demonstrating its ‘license’ to coexist with causal necessity.
The third antinomy in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason can be taken as a classical representative of the more familiar view, so I will start with an outline of the well-known opposition between thesis and antithesis (I). Although I acknowledge briefly Kant's solution, I do not discuss it at length because my aim is to show how Hegel's analysis of causality opens up a different perspective on the antinomy by illuminating some of the presuppositions taken for granted by both sides (II). Finally I return to the main objective: the question of the meaning of the transition from causality to concept and the reason for identifying this transition with a logical conclusion from necessity to freedom (III).
Before I start, two qualifying remarks are in order. First, in discussing the end of Hegel's doctrine of essence together with Kant's account of the antinomy of freedom, I do not want to play down the difference between the contexts in which these discussions are presented by their respective authors. The antinomy of freedom arises within the field of rational cosmology and Kant's inquiry concerning this antinomy and rational cosmology in general is meant to deliver an indirect proof of the truth of transcendental idealism. Hegel's Science of Logic, in contrast to both, does not aim at a renewal of rational cosmology, nor does it aim at a proof of the truth of transcendental idealism. The science of logic in the Hegelian sense of the term explores categories in their own right, in their own determination and systematics, and nothing else. Secondly, the passages about causality are not the only passages in Hegel's Science of Logic that are important for Kant's antinomy of freedom. Quite the contrary, Hegel does not discuss this antinomy explicitly and extensively until the chapter on teleology, in the ‘Subjective Logic’ (SL 737-740), where the category of purpose is already developed, which certainly is not yet the case at the end of the Logic of Essence. These caveats notwithstanding, the end of the doctrine of essence is relevant for the understanding and the critique of the metaphysical issue of the aforesaid antinomy, or at least this is what I would like to argue for.
I. Causality, necessity, and freedom according to the ‘antinomy of freedom’ in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
The ‘antinomy of freedom’ or ‘the third conflict of the transcendental ideas’ (A444/B472) is constituted by this pair of thesis and antithesis:
‘Thesis: Causality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only one from which all the appearances of the world can be derived. It is also necessary to assume another causality through freedom in order to explain them.’ (A444/B472)
‘Antithesis: There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens solely in accordance with laws of nature.’ (A445/B473)
At its basis, this opposition presupposes a distinction between two kinds of causality, ‘causality according to natural laws’ on the one hand, and causality as ‘transcendental freedom’ or ‘absolute spontaneity’ on the other. The two opposing parties agree that there is causality of the first kind, but they disagree as to whether there is causality of the second kind. The proponent of the thesis holds the view that there is, and, what is more, must be causality of the second kind, too, because it is the precondition of causality of the first kind. The proponent of the antithesis holds the opposite view: There is no such second kind, and, what is more, there cannot be any causality of the second kind, because that would undermine the principle of causal explanation and determination of the first kind.
In their respective arguments, both parties work with the concept and the assumption of an infinite causal chain. How does this idea come into play? This is due to how causality of the first, ‘natural law’ type is conceived in itself:
One state of affairs A is the effect of another, preceding state B due to general causal laws, which connect states of type B invariantly to those of type A. State B itself must have come into existence in quite the same way, that is, out of another preceding state C, due to general causal laws, which connect states of type C to those of type B, and so on. There must be a preceding cause for B, for otherwise we would have to assume that B is an eternal state of affairs, which, in turn, would force us to assume as well that the state of affairs we began with, state A, is an eternal state of affairs. This clearly contradicts its being the effect, the causal outcome or offspring of some other state of affairs. So in order to function as a cause for state A, state B cannot be itself an eternal state of affairs, but has to be the effect of yet a third preceding state.
This argument motivates the assumption of continuous causal chains in which every state plays two complementary causal roles: the role of the effect relative to a preceding state and the role of the cause relative to a following state.
Freedom, by contrast, is conceived as uncaused cause: something that functions as a cause, but does not function as an effect of any preceding state. So, freedom is conceived as an interruption of the causal chains in which it occurs or as the absolute beginning of such a chain.
This is the conceptual common ground for both thesis and antithesis. On this basis, the proponent of the thesis presents the following argument: If there were only causations of the first kind, causal determination would never come to completion. Every cause would only be a relative, a conditioned cause, and, correspondingly, the necessity for A to come into being would remain only a relative affair—unable to produce a satisfying, i.e., a complete answer to the question of what it is that makes A's coming into being necessary, i.e., necessary without qualification. So in order to come to completion, causal determination of the first kind has to be supplemented by causes of the second kind: causes that are not caused by anything else.
Here the opponent of the thesis objects: If there were such uncaused causes, there would be states of affairs that shift from causal inactivity to causal action without any cause at all—by chance, without any possibility of explanation. Therefore, the continuity of causal determination would be interrupted, and—at any point of such interruptions—replaced not by another kind of causality but by the sheer opposite of causality: something indiscernible from mere chance. While causality gives us the reason why something happens, the causality of these assumed uncaused causes does not provide us any reason at all.
Hence there is the impression of an unresolved opposition between a claim to the necessity and a claim to the impossibility of free causes, of causality of the second kind. Kant's answer to this apparent opposition between seemingly well-founded assertions aims at a qualified thesis of compatibility. Freedom does not compete with causal necessity. It does not occur as a gap or an interruption of otherwise continuous causal chains; and so there is no need to stop or to withdraw causal explanations of the first kind in order to make room for freedom. According to Kant, freedom is conceivable together with causal necessity if we take into account a distinction that neither the advocate of the thesis nor the advocate of the antithesis thought of: the distinction between the realms of ‘noumena’ and ‘phenomena’, with freedom being located in the first realm, that is, outside of space and time, leaving existence in space and time to be governed entirely by causal necessity. As everything that exists in space and time counts as phenomenon, i.e., as appearance of what there is and not as what there is taken in itself, causal necessity as connection between appearances as such does not exclude the possibility of free causes behind the sphere of appearances.Footnote 2
I cannot go into the details of Kant's solution here, but it is easy to see—and Kant himself saw this—that his solution requires an explanation of how these two realms connect with one another. Here a problematic disjunction seems to arise: either the connection is a causal one, or it is not causal. If one opts for the former, that is, if the assumed free causes literally have effects in the sphere of phenomenal being, then the solution breaks down, because of the presupposition that there is continuity between causes and effects. If one adopts the non-causal option, then it is not clear why we could or should think of freedom as one of two kinds of causality at all.
Next, I turn to Hegel's analysis of causality in order to see what it can do for elucidating the whole affair.
II. Causality in Hegel's Science of Logic
Hegel enters the scene of causality with lighter baggage than do the advocates of the thesis and the antithesis in Kant's exposition of his third antinomy. While they presuppose a certain partition of causality into two kinds, taking one kind as already given, Hegel's analysis starts with the simple, undifferentiated definition of causality as the ‘relation of cause and effect’ (SL 558)—and then elaborates what is implicit in this definition itself, passing from ‘formal causality’ through ‘determinate’ or ‘finite’ and ‘conditioned’ causality to ‘action and reaction’ and to ‘reciprocity’Footnote 3.Footnote 4
This difference notwithstanding, there are notable parallels between the kinds of causality assumed in Kant's antinomy of freedom on the one hand and certain stages of Hegel's development of the category of causality itself on the other. Roughly put, we can assign the profile of causality of the first kind (causes necessarily linked to their effects on the one side and to their own causes on the other) to the stage of Hegel's argument characterized as ‘determinate’ or ‘finite’ causality. Correspondingly, the assumption of infinite causal chains reappears in Hegel's discussion of determinate causality. Causality of the assumed second kind shows notable parallels to a later stage of Hegel's analysis, where causality is thought of as presupposing precisely itself (in ‘action and reaction’ and ‘reciprocity’).
In order to understand the connections between those assumed kinds of causality on the one hand and those stages of Hegel's analysis on the other, one has to begin with the first stage of Hegel's analysis. This is so because Hegel argues for the following thesis: causality taken as ‘determinate relation’ (SL 560), as well as the associated assumption of infinite causal chains, is both the consequence and the continuation of a shortcoming, or a logical tension of the category of causality itself.
Accordingly, this section proceeds in three steps: step (i) addresses the question of wherein this shortcoming of causality consists; step (ii) is concerned with Hegel's analysis of causality as ‘determinate relation’ and its connection to the alleged first kind of causality; step (iii) is concerned with Hegel's analysis of causality as ‘conditioned by itself’ and its connection to the alleged second kind of causality.
Step (i): What exactly is the shortcoming of causality itself exposed in its first, abstract and formal definition as being the relation between cause and effect? Causality implies firstly that it is a relation between two different items that exist separated from each other, and secondly that there is identity of content between both items. Without the second statement, that is, without identity of content, the effect has characteristics that have not already been present in its cause, and therefore the alleged cause cannot be ‘the’ comprehensive cause of what is claimed as its effect. In this aspect of comprehensiveness (or of ‘totality’), the category of cause differs from the category of condition: Whereas the latter marks one or another circumstance as being relevant for the actuality of a given item, the former is meant as a complete reason for this item. That is, if there is a condition for A, it remains indeterminate if A will or will not be actual; but if there is a cause for A, the case is determined. ‘Consequently, effect contains nothing whatever that cause does not contain.’ (SL 559) The same holds conversely: ‘cause contains nothing which is not in its effect. Cause is cause only in so far as it produces an effect, and cause is nothing but this determination, to have an effect, and effect is nothing but this, to have a cause.’ (SL 559) But if identity is a defining moment of causality, difference is such a defining moment, too: Causality is an asymmetrical relation between cause as the ‘original basic matter [ursprüngliche Sache]’ (Enc §153) and effect as ‘a being-that-is-posited’ (Enc §154). If we contemplate causality without difference, there remains one single content with only a formal difference attached to it. The same content presents itself on the one side as the self-sufficient and determining item and on the other side as the dependent and determined one. If it is just the same content that indiscriminately presents itself on both sides, then the difference of sides is reduced to the formal one of determining and determinate, and so the form of causal determination itself vanishes, because mere repetition is no determination at all. Taken together, there are two mutually exclusive requirements for causality: A cause is the same and is not the same as its effect.
Step (ii) Hegel's analysis of causality as ‘determinate relation’ and its connection to relative causes, i.e., causes of the first kind in Kant's third antinomy: In the development of causality as ‘determinate relation’, however, the concept of causality gets a richer determination, and, at first sight, this enrichment seems to solve the contradiction by means of differentiation: What is identical in the causal relation is, on the one side, presupposed as a content that remains indifferently the same. If this indifferent identity is taken at face value, then it appears neither as cause nor as effect, but as a something underlying the causal relation. Thus, the identity of cause and effect reappears as a third moment, a substance-as-substrate, in which cause and effect inhere.
‘This external content is therefore devoid of any relationship, an immediate existence; or because it is, as content, the implicit identity of cause and effect, it too is an immediate, simply affirmative identity. This is, therefore, anything at all which has manifold determinations of its existence, among them also this, that in some respect or other it is cause or else effect.’ (SL 563)
Because this substance-as-substrate is conceived of as having its own identity independently of the causal relations that are, nevertheless, ascribed to it, causality turns out to be a relational affair between several substances: Presupposed as an immediate being of its own, substance cannot be the reason for its causality. Its causality has to be a relation to different substances of the same logical design. In this way, we get a substance B, which receives effects from another substance C and produces effects on still another substance A.
What about the cause and effect in themselves, distinguished from their substrates? They present themselves as internally differentiated in an analogous manner. One and the same content appears now in a twofold description: on the one hand, as an immediate or simple, qualitative determination, and, on the other hand, as a relational determination, as the effect of its substrate's being causally determined by another substance, or, in the other direction, as the cause of another substrate's determination. Put in its simple, abstract form, this corresponds to causality of type (i) in Kant's third antinomy: One item causes another, and is caused by a third one. Everything that functions as a cause, also functions as an effect, and everything that functions as an effect, also functions as a cause. Compared with the abstract definition of causality with which Hegel's analysis started, the new version seems to avoid the problem of the first. There is identity, and there is difference, but now they are disentangled. Causes are effects, yes; but now this double role is played with different causal partners, and so the air of tautology is removed. Or so it seems.
For what looks like a solution, turns out to be the continuation of the problem. This becomes manifest in the consequence of infinite causal chains. Hegel asks: ‘Why has the cause a fresh cause? That is to say, why is the same side which was previously determined as cause now determined as effect, with a consequent demand for a fresh cause?’ (SL 564) And he gives the answer: ‘For this reason, that the cause is finite, a determinate in general’ (SL 564). In doubling the description of ‘cause’ (the same holds for ‘effect’) as (a) an immediate content—a something being what it is, detached from causal roles—and (b) as cause, an opaque relation between (a) and (b) results. Switching from (b) to (a), it becomes clear that, taken in itself, the assumed cause does not fill the bill. Now, within the framework of causality, this leads to the assumption of another item that mediates between (a) and (b): hence the plausibility of the assumption of infinite causal chains as a universally holding structure. But there is an illusion in this assumption: The shortcoming cannot be remedied by the reiteration of the same logical form of determination. After all, the cause for a cause remains a cause; and if—as just shown—the fault lies in what it is to be a cause, the reiteration will bring back this very fault, too.
So, the question of the third antinomy comes too late. To ask if there are any non-relative, any final members of an otherwise infinite causal chain that constitutes the world is to underestimate the logical nature of the issue.
Step (iii) The further development of Hegel's analysis of causality and absolute causes, i.e., causes of the second kind in Kant's third antinomy:
If the preceding line of reasoning is on the right track, this has to be confirmed when one turns to the assumed second kind of causality, the idea of causes which have effects but no causes external and prior to themselves. With respect to this second kind of causality, I turn to the string of arguments developed in the second half of Hegel's analysis of causality that concludes in Hegel's identification of causality as reciprocity. The main point here, as regards our present concerns, is the thesis that causality in general, not a special kind of it, is a self-relation, or, more precisely, that causality is conditioned by itself. This step changes the view of causality as an endless straight line of causes and effects to the view of causality as a circular structure, as reciprocity, mutually causal interaction. As Hegel puts it: ‘[…] the action, which in finite causality runs on into the spuriously infinite progress, is bent round and becomes an action that returns into itself, an infinite reciprocal action’ (SL 569).
At the stage of finite or determinate causality, causality presented itself in the following manner: There are substances, i.e., independent things receiving and causing effects in relation with several other substances or things. Looking now a bit closer to the part of ‘receiving effects’, of being causally determined, one can see that the conceptual form of those substances or things has to be revised. At first sight the receiving part appeared just as substrate, which means being an otherwise wholly indifferent bearer or receiver of the effect. This, however, cannot be the whole story, because the simple separation between the substance on the one hand and its causal relation on the other makes it incomprehensible how this same substance can itself be a player in the causal field. In order to receive effects, the receiver has to be suitable for that. It has to be open to becoming necessarily determined by something else. With respect to this receptivity requirement, substance presents itself as ‘passive substance’, with its counterpart in a corresponding ‘active substance’. This is the first aspect in which causality itself presents itself as conditioned or presupposing.
As I said earlier, Hegel also argues for a stronger thesis: what causality presupposes is causality itself. The argument for this stronger thesis can be reconstructed in two stages. The first stage works within the framework of the distinction between passive and active substance, while the second stage is addressed to this distinction itself.
First, Hegel points out that receiving effects has presuppositions in the constitution of the passive substance. What is presupposed is the correspondence between the actual causal role of a thing or substance and its character. The latter is thought of as enabling the substance to play its causal role in the first place. Thus conceived, causality is thought of as actualization of real possibilities. This again brings in the identity of content. What is actualized remains the same content in passing from possibility to actuality. In this sense we have sameness between what is presupposed and what is presupposing.
But there is more to get here. There is not only sameness in respect of content, but also difference; and there is not only sameness in respect of content, but also sameness in respect of form. This brings us to the second stage of the argument: By now, there is a constellation with two independent substances involved in a causal relationship with one identical content and two reciprocal causal roles: one substance taking the passive role, the other substance taking the active role. But what about this one identical content? It is impossible that the only difference remains the purely formal one of possibility and actuality. Becoming actual in another substance must have an impact on the outcome. Otherwise, the equally presupposed independence of the active and the passive substance would vanish. The formal distinction must be accompanied by a distinction in content as well. Being presupposed as something of its own, the substance thought of as the passive part will make itself be felt as being substantial in this actualization. The effect then is not just ‘delivered’ by something else; it bears the traces not only of the aforesaid active substance, but of the aforesaid passive one, too.
The same holds, conversely, for the aforesaid active substance. Taken together, the former view of a clear-cut distribution of active versus passive role has to be replaced by a more complicated one: there seems to be activity and passivity on both sides of our causal story. Previously (at the level of ‘determinate’ or ‘finite’ causality) a substance appeared to bring forth and to receive effects in different respects and in different relations to different causal partners. Now, having inspected more closely what it is to cause and to receive an effect, it has turned out that the simultaneity of bringing forth and receiving, of being active and passive, is present in one and the same respect. Being a causal relation has turned out to be a reciprocal affair; causality itself is (causal) reciprocity.
This stage of Hegel's argument presents all we need in order to resolve the puzzle of Kant's third antinomy at its most abstract level. The proponent of the thesis is right in recognizing a fault in causality of the alleged first kind. He is not right in his conclusion that there is another sort of causality. For, what he maintains as missing is already present in the alleged first kind of causality—present in a way, however, which produces an inconsistency within this alleged first kind. The proponent of the antithesis is right in stating an inconsistency within the alleged second kind of causality. He is not right in excluding the identity requirement his opponent reminds him of. What they both take for coordinated kinds of causality has turned out to be moments of causality.
III. Reciprocity and the transition from necessity to freedom, or from causality to the concept
Thinking along these lines might tempt one to expect reciprocity to be the final solution of the problems immanent to the prior stages of rethinking causality. Obviously, Hegel himself does not share this expectation, reciprocity constituting the end of causality but not the end of the science of logic. In order to show how we should understand the move beyond causality in its last, reciprocal form we need to establish that causal reciprocity is a distinct logical problem; and that the problem belongs to the general development of causality marking the end of the logic of causality. While the identification of the problem already paves the way for turning to the logic of the concept, there remains to address the question why the move to the logic of the concept understood in the way I propose can also be described as a move to freedom. I address this issue last when I conclude the reconstruction of Hegel's argument.
To establish that causal reciprocity presents indeed a distinctive logical problem we need to answer the following: Does causal reciprocity overcome the contradiction, which Hegel discovered in the category of causality as such? It does not look as if it does. Let there be two substances, A and B, and a way of being, m, that is explained in the elaborated reciprocal form of causality. So, A is or becomes m by being causally determined by B; B in turn is causally determined to act on A with the effect m by A, with A having been m already.—It is still to be remembered that a cause should determine its other side, its effect. Now, causality as causal reciprocity shows a peculiarity in this respect. In reciprocity, the item to be determined appears on the side of the cause—not at once, admittedly, but as the mediate or indirect cause, the cause of its cause. This mediate or indirect position of A as m in the role of a cause for A's being or becoming m notwithstanding, there is a tautology involved, just as in the formal definition of causality at the beginning of the analysis when one and the same content appeared immediately in the double role of cause and effect.
The same point can be made, when the epistemological question is raised: Can an explanation be satisfying when something's being or becoming such and such is explained in the reciprocal way? The answer cannot be in the positive, because there is a problematic circularity at work: The explanandum occurs on the side of the explanans. If A's being m is presupposed in its explanation, it cannot be properly explained by such an explanation.
Hegel points to this problem in invoking an example taken from the field of history:
‘If we consider, for example, the customs of the Spartan people as the effect of its constitution and then, vice versa, this as the effect of its customs, this consideration may for all that be correct; but this construal, for this reason, does not provide any ultimate satisfaction, since by this means neither the constitution nor the customs of this people are in fact comprehended. That happens only by virtue of the fact that those two sides, and equally all the remaining particular sides revealed by the life and history of the Spartan people, are known to be grounded [begründet] in this concept.’ (Enc §156, addition, 229)
The final sentence of the passage just quoted already points to the positive consequence that follows from the critique of causality, according to Hegel. In order to comprehend this shift from the critique of causality to its positive result let us summarize the critique first and rethink the stage reached in reciprocity in the light of this critique.
Let us now focus on the developmental implications arising from our treatment of causal reciprocity. The crucial problem or shortcoming of the category of causality in general can be described in two intrinsically connected ways: We may describe it as a problem of form and content, and we may describe it as a problem of identity and difference between cause and effect. The problematic feature concerning form and content consists in the fact that thinking in terms of causality means to separate content from logical form, while the separation is negated by this very form of thought. Playing causal roles comes like a second layer of determination, external and additive to a primary layer, to which it is only factually and formally related. An ‘actor’ in the causal play is conceived as having a being determinate of its own that simply does not enter in the causal play itself, which, in turn, thus remains a purely relational affair, an affair of external relationship. Nevertheless, the content that is thus detached from its causal role—its form—, is, within the same category of causality, thought of as a content that fully accounts for its form, the causal roles it is assumed to play. So we have form separated from content, which is, nonetheless, conceptualized as its own content. There is an immediate way of conceiving this latter connection between form and content of causality. This immediate way consists in identifying the causal players with their respective roles. Thus, one of the contents just seems to be the determining one—the cause—, whereas the other one seems to be the determined one. This leads us straight to the problem of identity and difference between cause and effect. When we conceive of something as an effect, we are concerned with the necessity of that very something; at the same time, we thereby invoke another entity that is meant to deliver or to entail this necessity. Since that is another entity, it cannot be reduced to simply being the necessity of the first; and insofar as it is the necessity of the first one that is at stake, it will not suffice to recur to something else.
Retrospectively, the several stages of Hegel's analysis of causality can be seen as the unfolding of these contradictions that are but two sides of the one coin of causality: The relation of causality demands both separation and identification of form and content; and it demands both identity and diversity for its poles.
We can also understand each stage of Hegel's argument as a critical reconstruction of the attempt to overcome this contradiction. First, one may seek to transform the simple tautology of identity of cause and effect into the identity of a substance-as-substrate with causal relations in different directions. Secondly, one may consider the connection between substances and their causal relations as one of ‘conditioning’. Finally one can attribute correlative double roles for substantial antagonists in mutual causal activity. These attempts do not merely repeat the contradiction, but are also ways of realizing, of carrying out, what at first had been only the insight of author and reader. This applies to the reciprocal point of view especially well. ‘You cannot explain an explanandum by reducing it to something else?’—Well, reciprocity, somehow, realizes this insight—by invoking the explanandum into the account of its own necessity. ‘You cannot explain an explanandum by repeating it?’—Well, reciprocity, somehow, realizes this, too—by invoking a causal counterpart.
Nevertheless, these modifications do not eliminate the problem, as we have seen before. What is the reason for the return of the problem? The reason is that we still try to restate the constellation of determining and being determined in terms of causality. This seems to be the core of the problem—and if so, its solution will lie there, too:
Assume two substances in reciprocal causal interaction, once again. Giving explanations of this form entails the insight that it will not suffice to point to something with which we are acquainted, and identify that known thing as our explanans, our cause. This will not suffice, be this another thing or the same thing as the one to be explained. The standpoint of reciprocity has already internalized the lecture that mere pointing—mere classifying something as a cause—will not do, because the item we point to presents itself as something which cannot be just a given immediacy or object of acquaintance. It presents itself as mediated—for the sake of being understood as a cause or as causing. We can also see already in the light of causal reciprocity that this mediation does not lead away from the original issue to more and more remote causes, as the idea of infinite causal chains would have it. In order to get to a solution of the problem that reciprocity still entails, we must only go one step further and drop the presupposition that this mediation has to be a causal one. But what else can it be, if not itself a causal connection between the two substances? The alternative is ready at hand: it has to be a connection between the two in terms of what they are. This is because a connection between A and B in terms of what they are meets the requirement of internal determination that is inbuilt in the category of causality and elaborated in reciprocity without being met within this categorical framework.
If this line of argument is correct, then the reason why logic goes from causality to concept via reciprocity is already found. In order to illuminate this point a little further, I would like to allude to an example from common explanatory practice: One may propose a causal explanation for the latest (and still ongoing) global financial crisis of 2008 by pointing to the default of real estate loans in the USA. This explanation begs the question: what made these loans capable of causing a crisis of global dimensions in the first place? After all, by all accounts, these loans were only a small part of the huge business they eventually brought to the edge of ruin. Thus, if this short and simple causal explanation has any explanatory power, it has to show this by being developed into a richer story. A possible way to develop this richer story, one of the many attempted in the literature surrounding this case, involves taking into account many intermediate causal connections, including the so-called domino effect of one bank causing the failure of the other with which it conducts business and so forth, which, taken together, connect the small initiating cause with the large effect. Amplify this explanatory picture as far as you like, the question still remains of what accounts for the causal connections themselves. Unless this question is addressed the picture cannot be taken as an explanation in the full sense because what we seek to understand is why it is the case that the failure of bank One had fatal consequences for bank Two. The crucial point is that these further questions will not get answers in the form of efficient causes all the way down. Rather, they are answerable in terms of ‘what-it-is’ kind of accounts, accounts that explain, for example, how real estate business is embedded in the calculations of financial capital, how the business of bank One is connected to the business of bank Two so that failure of the former causes troubles for the latter, and vice versa, and more broadly answers that illuminate the nature of the game of high finance.
Taken generally, causal connections hint to connections of a non-causal type, and explanations in terms of causality stand in need of an account of those non-causal connections. There is a way in which items thought of as cause and effect, or as bearers of causes, and bearers of effects, must be connected, rather than only become connected by acting and reacting. Thus, the transition from the logic of causality to the logic of the concept presents itself as a reasonable step from asking ‘Why’ to asking ‘What’.
But isn't there, at least, a serious objection to this reconstruction? In order to identify causal action or interaction the assumed causal players must surely be known. You cannot identify x as a cause for y without identifying x or without identifying y. So how can the solution of the problem of causality consist in going back to something that has to be known in making claims to causality? This objection alludes to the fact that things playing causal roles also have a determinate being of their own, and to the fact that this feature already belongs to the problem itself. That is true, but does not constitute an objection here. The solution lies in the difference between knowing of and knowing, and this solution also helps to sharpen the profile of what is meant by ‘concept’ in Hegel's science of logic. To be acquainted with something, to know of it, is one thing; it is quite another thing to know something in a way that enables us to explain what we are acquainted with. Hegel's logic of the concept is concerned with the logical structure of knowing of the second kind. Therefore, the logic of the concept will not annihilate the logic of causality (or the logic of essence, in general). After all, looking for causes and identifying them produces the reason why the concepts or the definitions of the items involved should be reconsidered and revised. Causal reasoning brings to the fore that those items are interconnected. Conceptual reasoning will have to figure out how this is the case.
We are now in a position to tackle the final question posed by the preceding analysis, namely how we should understand the claim that ‘freedom is the truth of necessity’. In other words, can we make sense of Hegel's characterization of the transition from the logic of causality to the logic of concept as a sublation of necessity into freedom? To this, I would like to give a twofold answer: If freedom is taken as the distinguishing character of self-conscious agents, this is not what has been reached. It is not yet known what it is to be a living being, or what it is to form and realize purposes—things that ought to be known to get a full-blown concept of freedom. Within the Science of Logic, they are explored in the second and third sections of the doctrine of the concept, not at its beginning.
With this limitation in mind, a more abstract sense of ‘freedom’ can be recognized; and this more abstract sense of freedom is indeed already in play:
It is in play as the abstract form of freedom in more concrete senses, that is, as self-determination. As long as the gap between form and content, between being something determinate on its own, on the one side, and causing other things to alter in determinate ways, or to receive effects from other things, on the other side, is filled by invoking something like ‘another thing’, ‘another item’, the determination will remain external to the things they are meant to connect, and, in this respect, there will be no self-determination. Once the presupposition that this work has to be done by still other somethings, other causes, is gone (and Hegel's treatment of causality has provided the argument for dropping this presupposition), determination returns to the items determined. What it is to be the kind of thing x is, is no other thing—neither ‘other’, nor ‘thing’—in relation to x. So the transition to the concept can be stated as a transition to a relation of x to itself, a self-relation.
What is more—and what is indeed needed in order to get to self-determination—, this self-relation entails determination: The concept in the sense of its logical genesis out of causality is no mere ‘double’ or partial repetition of its singulars, or of its particulars: it has come into play as the content in which causal players have to be connected in order to act the ways they do.
There is a second, epistemological side to this form of self-determination: that is the gain in terms of getting free from the theoretical constraints that accompany even the most elaborate forms of thinking in terms of essence:
When the nature common to causal agents is discovered and comprehended, then how the actions and reactions, how the relationships manifest in practice, are grounded in what those agents are is also understood. Thus, thinking in itself frees itself from the constraints that are inherent in the forms of essence, including the forms of causality and reciprocity. It becomes manifest and clear what it is that in these forms has remained a merely factual or ‘blind’ necessity coming along as accessory to immediate descriptions. Thus, freedom—at this stage of Hegel's logic—can be articulated in terms of comprehending, and this is how the logic of the concept is related to the issue of freedom at its outset.
For sure, this conclusion sums up to no more than a first sketchy outline. There are plenty of questions coming into play at this stage of the argument. The next question would be how the triple of universal, particular and singular comes to be the adequate way of determining the more abstract character of the concept introduced in this essay.Footnote 5 Instead of addressing new questions, I conclude with a short summary of what Hegel's analysis of causality and freedom at the end of the logic of essence contributes to the solution of the ‘antinomy of freedom’. As far as I can see, the main contribution consists in the insight that what the opposition between proponents and opponents of ‘free’ or ‘absolute’ causes presupposes as two separate kinds of causality are indeed moments of causality. This critique of a presupposition crucial to the whole case concurs with Kant's proposal for a solution of the antinomy in one respect. Both diagnoses come to the conclusion that there is no need to make room for those free causes within a sphere of otherwise necessarily causally determined entities. But in respect of the reason why this is the case and in respect of its consequences Hegel leaves the Kantian route. While Kantian free causes seem to be linked to phenomena in a problematically vacillating way, in Hegel's logic freedom in the abstract sense comes into play not as the specific character of a new kind of causal agent but as the structure of comprehensibility and comprehension. To cut a long story short: According to Hegel comprehension just begins where it was assumed to reach its very limits according to Kant.
