I. Introduction
A major point of contention between Hegel and philosophers before and after him is whether conceptual language has inherent limits. Are there parts of reality, forms of knowledge or modes of experience that resist conceptual grasp and that cannot be expressed in language?
At issue here is the perennial problem of the ineffable. With respect to twentieth-century thought, but also in comparison with his contemporaries, Hegel's thought might seem like a small island of confidence in a sea of distrust vis-à-vis the possibility of conceptual language to grasp and express reality, intuitive insights or the Absolute. A great number of philosophers have accordingly opposed themselves to Hegel on precisely this point. Because the Hegelian system is commonly believed to claim that reality is completely accessible to conceptual language, rival philosophies double down on the point that some things escape the realm of what can be said. It is thus taken for granted that something like an ineffable has no place within Hegel's thought, and consequently that a demonstration of the irreducible presence of an ineffable serves to rebuke Hegel.
A prominent example of this line of attack is provided by Adorno. Hegel's dialectics, according to Adorno, strives to capture and subsume the ‘non-identical’ under the identity of the concept in language. Adorno's negative dialectics takes aim at Hegel's ‘identity-thinking’ by resisting the hegemony of conceptual language and striving for the non-identical, which is truly ineffable (Finlayson Reference Finlayson2002; Jonas Reference Jonas and Herzog2013).Footnote 1 The question of ineffability and the limits of conceptual language similarly shapes the relation vis-à-vis Hegel in Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's thought, as well as in the post-structuralism of Derrida and Lyotard. The ineffable is also a relevant topic for staging a debate between Hegel and analytic philosophy of language, and Wittgenstein in particular. In the most recent philosophical debate on the ineffable, these quarrels with Hegel are reiterated (Bradley Reference Bradley2004; Brown and Simmons Reference Brown and Simmons2017; Franke Reference Franke2007, Reference Franke2014). It seems that for the various proponents of the ineffable, past and present, Hegel is explicitly identified as a primary opponent, who needs to be grappled with foremost. But regarding these polemics with Hegel, we should always question whether Hegel's thought is faithfully represented, or whether it figures more as a stereotype that is erected in order to be directly taken down. One can all too readily claim that Hegel's idea of absolute knowledge implies that everything can be said and thought, and that the ineffable is therefore rendered impossible for him, but can a detailed reading of Hegel warrant that claim? Hence, we ought to understand how Hegel, regardless of how he is often construed, actually conceives of the ineffable.
In recent commentary on this issue, several scholars have described Hegel's stance on the ineffable as one of strict denial. According to Cyril O'Regan, Hegel's thought can even be characterized by a repression of ineffability (O'Regan Reference O'Regan1994). An example he gives is Hegel's appropriation of the mystical tradition: while Hegel is highly appreciative of certain mystics (Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme), he only appropriates the aspects in their thought that involve a ‘positive’ experience of divine presence, and that Hegel neglects the ‘negative’ aspects which emphasize the absence, transcendence and ineffability of God. O'Regan suggests that Hegel's repression of the apophatic elements in mystical texts mirrors a repression of the ineffable in his own thought—an operation that O'Regan calls an ‘apophatic erasure’ (O'Regan Reference O'Regan1994: 43). Hegel's apophatic erasure ‘systematically represses’ suggestions of the limits of language and the reality of what cannot be said, ‘leaving only a positive nonmysterious content to be appropriated’ (O'Regan Reference O'Regan1994: 43, n. 41).
I will call this take on Hegel and the ineffable the repression hypothesis. This hypothesis would entail that Hegel's thought simply cannot deal with what escapes conceptual language, and ends up repressing any hint of the latter's reality. If indeed, as William Franke says, for Hegel ‘the rational is coextensive with language and all it can express, this means that what is not expressible in language simply has no reality’ (Franke Reference Franke2014: 27). Franke's interpretation is thus in agreement with O'Regan's in claiming that Hegel's thought leaves no room to account for anything like an ineffable. I would like to make a different case. In this article I argue that Hegel does account for ineffability. His thought does not repress, but, on the contrary, radically confronts the problem that is posed by what appears to be unsayable.
The problem of the ineffable is complex. To begin with, we ought to bring into focus what precisely constitutes the philosophical problem of ineffability. Ineffability might mean two things that are related but ultimately distinct: the failure of linguistic expression and the failure of conceptual, discursive comprehension. It is the latter, I believe, that presents the more urgent philosophical challenge for Hegel. Ineffability has been invoked throughout the history of thought to indicate that some form of philosophical insight is inaccessible to discursive thought. In contrast with the first meaning of ineffability as merely the impossibility to express something through the medium of language, which does not necessarily involve the dimension of truth and insight (as it might refer to the lover's inability to put her deep affections into words), the second meaning of ineffability refers to a form of non-conceptual truth and extra-discursive insight. Regarding Hegel's unwavering commitment to conceptual thought, the problem of the ineffable is that a form of insight would supposedly escape the grasp of discursive understanding—and therefore the realm of what can be said.Footnote 2 It should be kept in mind for the current analysis that the ineffable is hence not just a matter of linguistic expression per se. It stands for the failure of conceptual language in conjunction with the inaccessibility of a particular truth or insight to discursive thought.
We should furthermore consider how we can approach the problem of the ineffable from within Hegel's systematic thought. A basic tenet of Hegel's philosophy is its opposition to rigid ideas of an unreachable ‘beyond’ (Jenseits). Across his works, Hegel is bent on dispelling the reification and fixation of what lies beyond reflective knowledge and conceptuality—whether it takes the form of private feeling, immediate experience, the unknowable Ding an sich or rather the transcendent realm of God and the Absolute. In this sense, the confrontation with the ineffable, with what lies beyond conceptual language, can be found all over Hegel's texts. In the Phenomenology of Spirit in particular, the escape from the realm of conceptual thought, language and dialogue, and the retreat into the realm of the ineffable, immediate certainty and private feeling is a constantly recurring theme. As a leitmotiv it structures sections like ‘Individuality’, ‘Conscience’ and ‘Revealed Religion’. Yet it is ‘Sense-Certainty’ that reflects on the notion of the ineffable in the most explicit sense. I will therefore focus my analysis on this first chapter of the Phenomenology.
Still, we need to be aware that in this chapter a rather specific kind of ineffable is at play, which cannot in an immediate and self-evident way be extended to the idea of the ineffable in general. With Jean Hyppolite we can make a rough distinction between two types of ineffable addressed by Hegel (Hyppolite Reference Hyppolite, Lawlor and Sen1997: 8). First an ineffable on the ‘this side’ of language, the sphere of what is so to speak too close and immediate for us to express in conceptual language, and which corresponds to the realm of private feeling, immediate intuition and other things with a purely particular, immediate character. Then there is also a type of ineffable on the ‘far side’ of language, that which is truly beyond the realm of conceptual discourse—either because it transcends finite human language or because it cannot be approached through conceptual reasoning. This class of ineffable typically encompasses God, the Absolute, or the One of Neoplatonism. Both types of ineffable continually reappear in the tradition of philosophy and theology, as the mysterious realm of what is prior to language, what cannot be accessed through ‘positive’ (kataphatic) language, but only through ‘negative’ (apophatic) language—the core of the theological via negativa—or even better, through mystical silence (Hyppolite Reference Hyppolite, Lawlor and Sen1997: 10). In accordance with this basic distinction, the ineffable addressed by Hegel in the chapter on ‘Sense-Certainty’ belongs to the ‘this side’ type. This article will therefore stick to an analysis of this kind of ineffable in Hegel's thought, leaving out the ‘far side’ ineffability of God and the Absolute. The latter sphere is arguably more important in Hegel's thought, as it constitutes his engagement with the whole tradition of Neoplatonism, Christian theology and with the various accounts of the Absolute of his contemporaries. Yet it is also more complex. A prior account of Hegel's understanding of the ineffable on ‘this side’ of language can very well serve to make his understanding of the ‘far side’ ineffable more accessible.Footnote 3
The analysis of this article begins with an initial assessment of Hegel's account in the Phenomenology's first chapter: ‘Sense-Certainty: or the “This” and “Meaning”’. This chapter considers how a pure particular in so far as it immediately appears to us presents itself as an immediate certainty, a certainty however that we cannot capture and express in language.Footnote 4 The immediate particular seems to escape from the universality of conceptual discourse, and can therefore properly be called ineffable. Does Hegel here admit that conceptual language has its limits, or does he ultimately resolve to repress and erase this supposedly dangerous possibility from his thought? Neither of these options is convincing, and I suggest another way to conceive of Hegel's interpretation of the particular's ineffability. In doing so, I build on the argument of Giorgio Agamben, who asserts that the ineffable is not repressed within Hegel's thought, but taken up and even constituted by the dialectic of language. Hence, in the subsequent section, I turn to Giorgio Agamben's Language and Death, in which the ineffable in Hegel's ‘Sense-Certainty’ is interpreted through the lens of linguistic theory on the indexical and the temporality of language. In the following section, I return to Hegel's account in ‘Sense-Certainty’, and I argue that with help of Agamben's interpretation, we can understand how Hegel's account of the ineffable particular should be understood in light of the dialectical nature of indication. What cannot be said does not reside outside the realm of language, but inherently belongs to the dialectic of language itself. I conclude with a general account of what I think it means in Hegel's thought that something is ineffable, and why Hegel cannot be accused of repressing the problem of the ineffable.
II. The ineffable in ‘Sense-Certainty’
The first chapter of the Phenomenology (‘Sense-certainty: or the “this” and “meaning”’) is a crucial text for understanding Hegel's theory of the ineffable because here Hegel explicitly refers to the ‘unutterable’. This chapter offers an analysis of the experience of Sense-Certainty. One tries to account for what immediately appears to the senses. Yet, to refer in discourse to what immediately appears as a purely particular phenomenon, is in fact to engage in a process of mediation. Consequently, when one means an immediate particular, a This, one actually expresses a mediated universal. The pure particular, in so far as we have immediate access to it, seems to reside beyond the domain of language, and would accordingly be ineffable. Yet despite all evidence offered by Hegel's text that something indeed escapes here from what language can express, Hegel concludes the chapter with the infamous assertion:
Consequently, what is called the unutterable [Unaussprechliche] is nothing else than the untrue [Unwahre], the irrational [Unvernünftige], what is merely meant [bloß Gemeinte]. (PS: 66/70)Footnote 5
Before we proceed to analyse this statement in the context of the chapter, we can briefly take it at face value. If we consider Hegel's conclusion on the status of the ineffable on its own, we might be led to believe that Hegel simply rejects the possibility of ineffability as an ‘untrue’, even ‘irrational’ position, as a misguided ‘opinion’ (Meinung) that we can easily shove aside. That something is beyond the realm of what language can express is simply nonsense. But one should then consider that Hegel, a few lines earlier, admitted of the immediate particular that ‘if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible, because the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language [der Sprache unerreichbar ist]’ (PS: 66/70). It seems that what Hegel affirms in this statement, is precisely that which he rejects a moment later, i.e. the reality of the unutterable, that which cannot be said. Reading these nearly adjacent passages, one could claim that Hegel shuts his eyes to the ineffable the moment it poses a real threat to his own system. After admitting the possibility that something cannot be said, Hegel immediately responds by denouncing this position as ‘untrue’ and ‘irrational’. The vehement rejections within this passage seem to testify to Hegel's firm denial to look the possibility of the ineffable in the face.
This perspective on Hegel's thought amounts to what I in the introduction called the repression hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, when confronted with something which cannot be said, Hegel supposedly reverts to a repression of the encountered ineffability. But does Hegel in this chapter indeed repress the ineffable? And is it true that Hegel's dialectic disavows that which cannot be said? A closer look at the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter of the Phenomenology provides a more nuanced understanding of Hegel's dealing with the ineffable.Footnote 6
Hegel initially tells us that the reality of an immediate particular, a This, seems to be the most undeniable and robust truth. The one thing it seems I cannot seriously doubt is what appears to me here and now, the being of the immediate This without further qualification. But for Hegel such an assertion is deeply flawed: ‘To make such an assertion is not to know what one is saying, to be unaware that one is saying the opposite of what one wants to say’ (PS: 65/69). A direct Sense-Certainty of a given particular, a This that is here and now as seen from the spatio-temporal perspective of the I, cannot be an absolute truth. In fact, the moment one accounts for the alleged truth of immediate Sense-Certainty, the This that was here and the ‘I’ that was now have turned into a different This and a different ‘I’, together with a different here and now. An immediate phenomenon vanishes as soon as I point to it. The certainty that I had of what appeared to my senses has instantly been repudiated. The consciousness of a truly particular and immediate given is actually and in truth only the consciousness of something that has always already disappeared:
‘Now’; it has already ceased to be in the act of pointing to it. The Now that is, is another Now than the one pointed to, and we see that the Now is just this: to be no more just when it is. The Now, as it is pointed out to us, is Now that has been, and this is its truth; it has not the truth of being. Yet this much is true, that it has been. But what essentially has been [gewesen ist] is, in fact, not an essence that is [kein Wesen]; it is not, and it was with being that we were concerned. (PS: 63/67)
The being of a This that is now is already no more in the moment that it is. Its presence, upon closer inspection, is just as much absence. Its being is, in fact, a nothingness. We could attempt to arrest our immediate Sense-Certainty before it disappears from view by speaking it. I am completely certain that I now see this tree, and by giving voice to this certainty, I try to preserve my particular temporal certainty as a truth in language. Yet, the statement ‘I now see this tree’ loses its initial truth when this moment and this I have passed away. It is now no longer true that I see it. The immediate certainty that gave rise to these words has been lost. The only truth that remains in these words is the universality of spatio-temporal being and consciousness—of the ‘thisness’, ‘nowness’ and ‘I-ness’ that remains when a particular This, Now and I have disappeared. I can never retrieve the particular Sense-Certainty that spoke the words, but I can recognize that it was an instance of the most abstract universality. What the immediate Sense-Certainty ends up revealing of the I and This, is the (quite meagre) truth of these abstract, universal concepts themselves: ‘All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing. Consciousness, for its part, is in this certainty only as a pure “I”’ (PS: 58/63). The immediate particular that was meant to be expressed in language, has been transformed by language into the expression of a mediated universal. As a consequence, language does not permit one to say what one means to say, to express one's ‘Meinung’ (opinion, here translated as ‘meaning’), i.e. the immediate This:
If they actually wanted to say ‘this’ bit of paper which they mean, if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible, because the sensuous This that is meant [das gemeint wird] cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e. to that which is inherently universal. (PS: 66/70)
We now understand why the immediate particular of Sense-Certainty confronts one with the ineffable. The sensuous This that one means cannot be said. To be more precise: what cannot be expressed is the particular This in so far as we are immediately aware of it, or in other words the particular that Sense-Certainty means in accordance with its own criterion of truth, viz. instantaneous immediacy. That what is meant to be expressed, the immediate particular, is destroyed through its own expression. It ‘crumbles away’ in the ‘actual attempt to say it’, and eventually one must admit of ‘speaking about something which is not’ (PS: 66/70). The particular and immediate fall outside of what language can express, in so far as discourse and consciousness are under the sway of mediation and the universal (cf. Enc I: §20R, 31/74). H. S. Harris notes that Hegel here implicitly refers to Aristotle's claim that particular things qua particular are ineffable (Harris Reference Harris1997: 217). However, in the following I aim to show that Hegel is not simply repeating Aristotle, but that he reflects on the deeper reasons and implications of the particular's ineffability for the supposed limits of conceptual language.
What one means to say, the pure particular, is negated in order to reveal the truth of universality. Only the dialectical negation of the immediate brings consciousness to truth. Why would a negation of the This be necessary for truth? A closer look at Hegel's use of words might shed more light on what he has in mind here:
The Now, as it is pointed out to us, is Now that has been [ist ein gewesenes], and this is its truth; it has not the truth of being. Yet this much is true, that it has been [gewesen ist]. But what essentially has been [gewesen ist] is, in fact, not an essence that is [kein Wesen]. (PS: 63/67)
In the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel notes that the German ‘Wesen’ (here translated as ‘essence’) is also used in the expression for the past tense of ‘sein’, viz. ‘gewesen’. This grammatical irregularity in the verb ‘to be’, according to Hegel, correctly denotes the relation between being and essence: ‘Essence we may certainly regard as past Being, remembering however meanwhile that the past is not utterly denied, but only laid aside [aufgehoben] and thus at the same time preserved [konserviert]’ (Enc I: §112A, 163/232). Hence, in so far as the past of sein is gewesen-sein, so the negation of being is essence. The Aufhebung or sublation of being does not result in pure non-being, but in the preservation of the truth of being. Yet the truth of being is not being itself, but its having-been, its Wesen, i.e. the universality of essence. The temporal negation of present into past is exactly the same movement as the linguistic transformation of the immediate particular that is meant into the universal that is expressed. The negativity that resides within the particular's being is thus revealed both by the movement of time and by its expression in language.
Unutterable as the This that is meant might be, Hegel has shown that what Meinung tries to say, the presumed certainty of the immediate This, is actually untrue. Hence, we arrive at Hegel's conclusion which has given rise to so many commentaries: that the ‘unutterable is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what is merely meant’ (PS: 66/70). But understood in its context, we see that Hegel does not simply discard the possibility of something ineffable in advance, by denouncing any such position as ‘irrational’. We now recognize Hegel's argument why the unutterable is indeed the ‘untrue’: the fickleness of Sense-Certainty cannot claim for its Meinung the character of truth, and one necessarily experiences the untruth of the certainty that one means, when one tries and fails to express it in language. Hegel repeats his verdict of the unutterable in §20 of the Encyclopaedia—the polemical tone is here clearly directed against the Romantic veneration of ineffable subjective experience—‘the unutterable—feeling or sensation—far from being the highest truth [das Vortrefflichste, Wahrste], is the most unimportant and untrue [das Unbedeutendste, Unwahrste]’ (Enc I: §20R, 31/74). The slight nuance of this statement compared to the one in the Phenomenology is meaningful, and helps to understand Hegel's position. The unutterable is not untrue as in plainly false, but as in most insignificant. What it means that the ineffable is ‘untrue’ is neatly illustrated in another paragraph:
although the common opinion is that it is just the ineffable that is the most excellent, yet this opinion, cherished by conceit [diese von der Eitelkeit gehegte Meinung], is unfounded, since what is ineffable is, in truth, only something obscure, fermenting, something which gains clarity only when it is able to put itself into words. (Enc III: §462A, 221/280)
The ineffable is not nonsense, but it occupies so to say the lowest rung on the ladder of truth.
The unutterable is hence not excluded from Hegel's account, let alone repressed, as if it would not belong to the realm of philosophy. The repression hypothesis is unfounded. To the contrary: the first chapter of the Phenomenology is for a large part concerned with understanding the unutterable character of the immediate particular. Instead of repressing the ineffable as such, Hegel rejects any desperate attempt to cling to the unproductive, insignificant and obscure ‘certainty’ that consciousness finds in the ineffable experience of the particular, and breaks any resistance against language's productive transformation of the ‘gewesen-sein’ of the particular into the ‘Wesen’ of the universal. The will to ‘take the This’ fails to ‘take the truth’:
Immediate certainty does not take over the truth [nimmt sich nicht das Wahre], for its truth is the universal, whereas certainty wants to apprehend the This [das Diese nehmen]. (PS: 67/71)
To mean the immediate particular without involving the universal is not only to deny oneself truth, but to deny oneself language. The persistent will to hold fast to immediate certainty must, in the last instance, refrain from speaking at all. This indeed reminds of mystical thought, where the ineffable can only be approached through the renunciation of language in profound silence. Another way to interpret the will to take the This in silence is, following H. S. Harris, to attribute this will to a solipsistic Protagoras, who as individual I is ‘the measure of all things’ (Harris Reference Harris1997: 219). ‘Mein-ung’ indeed means that which, as my particular opinion, is not shared by others. ‘What I only mean or suppose is mine [was ich nur meine, ist mein]: it belongs to me—this particular individual’ (Enc I: §20R, 31/74). To hold fast to one's own Meinung is therefore to resist the dialogical and intersubjective aspect of language, to have no need for truth or community, and thus to trample underfoot the roots of humanity (PS: 43/47).
Nevertheless, Hegel's recognition of the inability of language to speak the immediate particular in so far as it is meant by Sense-Certainty leaves room to resolutely oppose his dialectic. Jean Hyppolite observes that in full accordance with Hegel's account, the rejection of the mediation of language in favour of the ineffable silence of immediate Sense-Certainty remains a possibility (Hyppolite Reference Hyppolite, Lawlor and Sen1997: 12). That is, Hyppolite adds, for Hegel this possibility would certainly not constitute a valid philosophical rebuke: it is a form of abstract negation, an unproductive nothingness leading to an empty abyss (PS: 114/112). Yet the ineffable Meinung of immediate Sense-Certainty, unproductive and untrue as it might be from a Hegelian perspective, can still be affirmed. Indeed, the fact that we mean to say something that ultimately cannot be expressed, shows that there is something prior to language, which escapes the grasp of language. Otherwise, we would not be able to mean it at all. While the immediate certainty of the particular that we mean to say might inevitably get lost in all expression and mediation, it is undeniably the case that this certainty of ours has been there. According to the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter, we would never arrive at the truth of language if it were not for the experience of Sense-Certainty and the urge to put this certainty into words. It seems therefore that we must acknowledge that our immediate Sense-Certainty of the particular This is certainly real, even if we cannot capture it in language. And because the ineffable This that we mean cannot be expressed in language, immediate Sense-Certainty cannot as such be incorporated by Hegel's conceptual dialectic—or so it appears. Even if we grant Hegel that immediate Sense-Certainty is indeed aufgehoben, or negated and preserved, in the subsequent stage of ‘taking-the-truth’ (Wahrnehmung, viz. perception), does this sublation not leave behind a remainder of the original experience of Sense-Certainty, a remainder which as such cannot be taken up in Hegel's dialectic? Do we thus encounter something opaque to Hegel's thought, namely the ineffable This that we mean, the non-conceptual experience of Sense-Certainty, the immediate insight achieved by this form of consciousness?
Feuerbach voices this objection in a paradigmatic manner and makes use of this opportunity to attack Hegel's dialectic: he affirms the reality of Sense-Certainty to the detriment of language. Not the unutterable particular but language should be called unreal if it cannot put Sense-Certainty into words:
For sensible consciousness [sinnlichen Bewusstsein] it is precisely language that is unreal [das Unreale] and void [das Nichtige]. How could the fact that a particular being cannot be said ever refute sensible consciousness? In this, sensible consciousness rather encounters a refutation of language, and not a refutation of sense-certainty. (Feuerbach Reference Feuerbach and Thies1975: 34, translation by author)
Accordingly, opposition to Hegel's dialectics seems to attain a secure foothold in the reality of the ineffable, that which resists mediation and expression.Footnote 7 It is not only the alleged comprehensiveness of the Hegelian system that is at risk of collapse, because of its inability to grasp the ineffable particular. It is also in a more direct way that Hegel's dialectics is endangered by the affirmation of Sense-Certainty, as the process of sublation seems susceptible to obstruction by the indigestible particle of the ineffable particular.Footnote 8 But is the ineffable indeed beyond what Hegel's thought can incorporate?
III. Agamben on the indexical and the utterance
In order to respond to these challenges, I must first turn to Giorgio Agamben's insightful commentary on Hegel's ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter. In his book Language and Death: the Place of Negativity, Agamben denies that Hegel's dialectic can be opposed from the standpoint that affirms the ineffable. The ineffable can never constitute a position transcendent to the dialectic of language. Even if one fully affirms the ineffability of Sense-Certainty's Meinung, and opts for a rejection of language in toto, one is still not outside Hegel's dialectical mechanism. ‘Any thought that wishes to think beyond Hegelianism cannot truly find a foundation, against the negative dialectic and its discourse, in the experience (mystical and, if coherent, necessarily mute) of disengaged negativity’ (Agamben Reference Agamben, Pinkus and Hardt1991: 53).Footnote 9 In this section I will summarize Agamben's line of argument that supports this conclusion. Subsequently I determine to what extent his approach is helpful for understanding Hegel's thought on the ineffable.Footnote 10
Agamben introduces us to the linguistic notion of the indexical (or shifter), which is key to understanding the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter. The meaning of indexical terms, such as This, Now and I, depends on the context of their expression in discourse. Detached from any discursive context, they do not refer to any signified. Without being spoken by someone, they basically remain empty signifiers. By being spoken, they establish a relation to the context of their expression and only then do they become meaningful. In Agamben's words, indexicals ‘permit the passage from langue to parole’ (Agamben Reference Agamben, Pinkus and Hardt1991: 24). This ‘passage’ (which of course should not be understood as a real transition between two forms of language, as langue/parole is only an analytic distinction) implies that language is not merely a system of signifiers/signifieds in ideality (langue), but that it necessarily involves a dimension of actuality, of being-spoken (parole). The case of indexicals makes clear that language must take place. Before indexicals can denote any particular object (such as ‘this tree’), or even the speaker or person addressed (‘I’ and ‘you’), these words, according to Agamben, must first of all have established a relation to the actual voice that uttered them. Or in other words, to the concrete and specific happening of their discursive expression itself. Indexical terms hence always point to the taking-place of discourse—what Agamben, following the French linguist Émile Benveniste, calls the ‘utterance’. Indexicals establish a relation to the pure instance of discourse, rather than to what is said in discourse. In discourse, we refer to the very taking-place of that discourse through indexicals, even if the disclosure of that taking-place remains implicit.
The structure of indexicals implies that the ability of language to refer to any particular being (this, I) or event (now) is as such based upon and conditioned by the reference of language to its own utterance. According to Agamben and Benveniste, it is even only through language and the structure of its indexical self-reference that we can experience the particular event as such. It is only the possibility to speak words like This, Now and I which refer to language's taking-place, that enables us to grasp a pure particular, a spatio-temporally located event (Agamben Reference Agamben, Pinkus and Hardt1991: 36). This insight informs Agamben's reading of Hegel's ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter. Agamben points at Hegel's dialectic of the This and explains how the particular can never be experienced without involving the structure of indication that language enables. Sense-Certainty, ‘immediate’ as it might seem, is always already mediated through language and the dialectic of indication. Agamben here alludes to Hegel's claim that neither the ‘Now’ nor the ‘pointing out of the Now’ is ‘something immediate and simple, but a movement which contains various moments’ (PS: 63–64/68). To indicate the Now or This, even when we try to avoid using these concepts in any explicit sense, is according to Agamben always ‘a process of mediation, or more properly, a true and proper dialectic that, as such, always contains within itself a negation’ (Agamben Reference Agamben, Pinkus and Hardt1991: 11). And this process of mediation, according to Agamben, is enabled by language. The indication of particulars qua particular is thus only possible linguistically, structured by language's ability to refer, through indexicals, to its own taking-place. Hence, according to Agamben, the particular This and I, in so far as they are grasped as a particular This and I at all, are linguistically constituted. In this connection these phenomena cannot be deemed external to language. Sense-Certainty is hence, without being aware of it, already a form of language.
But if language is, according to Agamben, always implicated in the particular This, how should we interpret Hegel's assertion that ‘the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language’ (PS: 66/70)? Is the This in or excluded from language? As we have seen, Hegel notes that the particular qua particular is only as ‘having-been’, as negated presence (PS: 63/67). That language destroys the particular This by saying it, only means that it presents and enacts the movement of disappearance that constitutes the particular's own being. To speak the particular is therefore to recapitulate the inner dialectic of the particular. Nevertheless, how does Agamben explain that language, as ‘that which is inherently universal’ (PS: 66/70) and which can only use universal concepts, is able to fully enact the dialectic of the particular This of Sense-Certainty? This question ultimately boils down to the challenge with which we ended the last section. It is the claim that the inherently universal and mediated character of language cannot fully account for the original and pre-conceptual immediacy of Sense-Certainty. Let us revisit this position for a moment. If we think about it, it might not be so surprising that the negativity of ‘having-been’ is the only possible mode for the particular This in the properly universal dimension of language. Even if according to Hegel the ‘truth’ of the This is indeed its revelation as not-This, we are still forced to recognize the given, original presence of the This that preceded its negation. And this original This, to which we have intuitive access in Sense-Certainty and which Sense-Certainty means, cannot be reached by language. To phrase it differently, the encounter with the This in Sense-Certainty is an event. And as event it can never be fully expressed in language—its expression would always leave a remainder unexpressed, i.e. precisely its event-character. In order to convincingly answer this objection, we have to return to Agamben's analysis of the indexical once more.
Agamben's analysis indicates that the being of language is not just universal. He reminds us that there is a difference between langue and parole. And the difference between langue and parole is precisely the introduction of the event-character into language. Language, in order to signify, must take place. The being of language is hence both universal and particular. As event, the taking-place of discourse contains the same temporal structure as of every Now, This or I. Yet from Hegel's dialectic we know that this temporal structure implies a negativity. Language must not only take place, but must negate this taking-place to open up the universal domain of signification. Language's signifying dimension, or the possibility of its content being understood, is according to Agamben conditioned by the negation of its taking-place. Just as, according to Hegel, the universal truth of the This presupposes its manifestation as not-This, so the universal understanding of what is said in language presupposes the transformation of language's taking-place into not-taking-place. To put it in less abstract terms: in discourse, we listen in the end to what is said, not to its being said. While the phenomenon of the indexical shows us that the utterance is a sine qua non for signification, it is the negation of the utterance and its transformation into discourse that opens up the dimension of meaning. In listening to speech, we have already ‘negated’ the happening of the speech-event. The utterance, as soon as it is referred to by the indexical, is hence no longer present, has already disappeared—just like every pure event, every Now. Language brings with it the dialectical negation of its own taking-place. According to Agamben, the pure utterance, from the perspective of signification and meaning, thus constitutes a negative dimension. But it necessarily underlies every positive meaning, and all signification presupposes the utterance. Only as negated can the instance of speech be referred to within speech, by way of the indexical.Footnote 11 Indexicals thus only ever denote the absence, the ‘having-been’ of the taking-place of their own expression.
This negative dimension of the utterance is what allows language to fully capture Sense-Certainty in its truth. Speaking the This in language reveals the dialectical negation that pertains both to the particular's temporal being and to discourse's temporal taking-place. Just as language's being consists in the negation of its taking-place, so the particular's being consists in the negation of its presence. On the one hand, we need the foundational presence both of the speech-event and the This. But on the other hand, this presence must have disappeared for it to function as foundation. And only as absence can the This and the utterance be referred to, be experienced, be understood.
In short, Agamben tells us that the presence of both the particular This and the taking-place of language is never immediately accessible. It can only be approached and experienced when a negation has already taken place, i.e. when this presence has already been transformed into absence. This negation is not an external attribution by language to something that is in itself purely positive. Rather, in so far as it is revealed as a positive something at all, this something is in itself already marked by a movement of negation. What we would initially call ‘immediate’ presence, whether of the speech-event or of the This, can only appear in retrospect as the foundation of subsequent linguistic signification. In retrospect, i.e. as already passed, as having disappeared, as mediated and sublated presence.
IV. Hegel on language and the ineffable This
What can Agamben's inquiry into the structure of the indexical and the utterance add to our understanding of Hegel's account of the ineffable in the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter? Can we even take Agamben's analysis for a genuine interpretation of Hegel, or does Agamben develop his own theory that departs from Hegel? For example, is Agamben's emphasis on the particularity and event-character of discourse not in direct contradiction with Hegel's statement that language ‘belongs to consciousness, i.e. to that which is inherently universal’ (PS: 66/70)? And to what extent is Agamben's theory of the linguistic structure of consciousness compatible with Hegel's thought and his account in ‘Sense-Certainty’ in particular?
I will address these questions, but first I want to clarify what, in my view, is the status of Agamben's account vis-à-vis Hegel's account. I think that Agamben's analysis helps to trace and reveal notions and structures in Hegel's text regarding language and the ineffable. Even if Agamben uses distinct terminology (e.g. ‘utterance’, ‘taking-place of language’) we recognize very similar insights in Hegel's dialectic of Sense-Certainty and language. This is also to say that Agamben does not discover aspects like the temporality and particularity of language, as a meticulous reading of Hegel can already reveal these aspects. Nevertheless, Agamben's account helpfully uncovers notions that are sometimes quite implicit in Hegel's text.
Is Agamben's account fully in line with Hegel's thought? To begin with, I believe that the distinction that Agamben makes between langue and parole, and his understanding of the dialectic between particularity and universality that inheres in the being of language, are in agreement with Hegel's understanding of language, on which he is clear in specific parts of the Phenomenology. As expression and real existence of the ‘I’, Hegel states, language is both particular and vanishes as particular, in order to make manifest and to signify, as universal.
Language, however, contains it in its purity, it alone expresses the ‘I’, the ‘I’ itself. […] The ‘I’ is this particular ‘I’—but equally the universal ‘I’; its manifesting is also at once the externalization and vanishing of this particular ‘I’, and as a result the ‘I’ remains in its universality. The ‘I’ that utters itself is heard or perceived […] That it is perceived or heard means that its real existence dies away; this its otherness has been taken back into itself; and its real existence is just this: that as a self-conscious Now, as a real existence, it is not a real existence, and through this vanishing it is a real existence. This vanishing is thus itself at once its abiding. (PS: 308–9/276)
This passage from ‘Spirit’ shows that Agamben's emphasis on the instance of speech is in agreement with Hegel's thought. Language is only universal by passing through and negating the moment of particularity. An illuminating passage in §20 of the Encyclopaedia confirms this. Here Hegel's familiar assertion that language and thought are inherently universal is preceded by this remark: ‘thought and the universal are precisely this, that it is at once itself and its other, it infringes [übergreift] upon this other, and nothing escapes it’ (Enc I: §20R, 31/74, translation amended). The implication is that language is at once universal and particular.Footnote 12 That in discourse we can only say a universal does not exclude the event-character and particularity of discourse, but implies that signification is always the mediated result of language's transformation of particularity into universality. Similar to what we read in Agamben's account, language must pass through the moment of being a particular This and Now in the event of the utterance. Yet the nature of language consists in the negation of its taking place as particular event and the transformation into universal signification. Hegel's own text thus confirms Agamben's claim that language enacts the same dialectical movement that characterizes Sense-Certainty.
What about Agamben's theory of the linguistic structure of consciousness, can we find support for this idea in Hegel? Not in this strong sense, I believe. Whereas Agamben explicitly claims that we can only have experience of a pure particular because we have language and the indexical at our disposal, we can find no such idea in Hegel. Nonetheless, there is some precedence for reading Hegel in this way. Josef Simon has argued that for Hegel any form of consciousness, including the most immediate form of empirical consciousness, is necessarily ‘sprachliches Bewusstsein’. Consequently, Sense-Certainty is also linguistically determined (Simon Reference Simon1966: 26, 29). Jean Hyppolite similarly determines Sense-Certainty as ‘a discourse which is not yet the discourse which recognizes itself as such, as self, and as the discourse of things’ (Hyppolite Reference Hyppolite, Lawlor and Sen1997: 14). Just as we saw in the interpretation of Agamben, Sense-Certainty would thus already be a form of discourse, though an implicit discourse. While I believe it goes too far as to attribute to Hegel the sweeping notion that consciousness as such has a linguistic structure, I find it convincing on the basis of Hegel's text that in the dialectic of Sense-Certainty we recognize an underlying structure of language. Recall Hegel's claim that indicating the immediate particular actually involves mediation (PS: 63–64/68), and that the attempt to indicate the This without language by simply pointing to it neither escapes mediation (PS: 66/70). This supports the notion that experience of the particular qua particular inevitably involves the mediation inherent to indication. This leads back to Agamben's analysis, because the dialectic of indication is based on the indexical structure of language. Sense-Certainty thus involves the linguistic structure of indication, even if the involvement of language remains implicit.Footnote 13
Now that we have seen how language and the experience of Sense-Certainty are intimately connected, what does this entail for Hegel's understanding of the ineffable in the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter? In Sense-Certainty's experience of the immediate particular we recognize the dialectical structure of linguistic indication. Hence, that the pure particular, in so far as it is meant, cannot be said, does not therefore entail that the Sense-Certainty of a particular is ‘extralinguistic’, i.e. that it would stand outside language. Here I firmly disagree with H. S. Harris, who claims that for Hegel ‘“thisness” […] is extralinguistic’ (Harris Reference Harris1997: 227). It is not extralinguistic because language itself involves ‘thisness’, and ‘thisness’ as such is made accessible by the indexical self-reference of discourse. Yet it is true that, within the dimension of signification that language opens up, we cannot positively express a particular qua immediate particular, as Sense-Certainty means to. Hence, while ‘thisness’ is not extralinguistic, it is indeed ineffable. What it means that the This that one means cannot be said, can therefore only be understood from a linguistic perspective.
Language as parole passes through the moment of the utterance, which from the perspective of signification can only appear as already negated. The implicit reference of an indexical to the negated event of speech equally imposes this negativity on the indexical's signified. That is to say, the This or Now can only be indicated as a negativity. Seen in this light, the error implicit in Sense-Certainty is to take its consciousness of the particular as the manifestation of a pure, immediate and positive given, without recognizing the negativity that inheres in this manifestation. Because the particular can only appear in retrospect as an inherently negative moment, its ineffability does not conceal an original, pre-linguistic presence. It only expresses its constitutive negativity. The ineffable can in the end only be understood as the result of the dialectic of language. The particular This of Sense-Certainty is always already included in the dialectic of language, and cannot be thought outside of it.
Hence, any position that tries to oppose the dialectic by clinging to the reality of the ineffable misunderstands the nature of ineffability. Sense-Certainty in its Meinung tries to hold on to something positive which has reality only as a negative. It mistakenly perceives something positive to reside beyond the limits of language, to lie behind the veil of the ineffable, and that only its entry into language attaches to it a negativity that is not proper to its original being. But it is language itself that ultimately establishes the untruth of this position, and the truth of its own. Language shows that what can only be referred to in retrospect as already negated cannot simply be evoked as pure presence. That Sense-Certainty's Meinung means to recall the presence of what in truth is absent is only to say that it means to say something that is not true. The divine providence of language stops the attempt of Meinung in its tracks:
Language […] has the divine nature [die göttliche Natur] of directly reversing the meaning of what is said [die Meinung unmittelbar zu verkehren], of making it into something else, and thus not letting what is meant get into words at all. (PS: 66/70)
The moment Meinung tries to say what it means, language uses its attempt to actually bring about the opposite, destining that which was meant to be that which cannot be said. Not because the universality of language represses or cannot account for the pure particular, but because language truthfully enacts the negative movement that is constitutive for the being of the particular. Hence, ‘what is called the unutterable is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what is merely meant’ (PS: 66/70). That which one means but cannot say is not an illusion, but to affirm and hypostasize it as an ineffable reality is untrue and irrational—both because the immediate particular is in fact always already absent and can therefore not be rendered present, and because this affirmation fails to recognize the truth that is revealed precisely by the dialectical negation of the particular that was meant. Understood from the right perspective, the ineffable does not hint at some profound reality beyond language. All the ineffable does is express and preserve the particular's proper negativity. Agamben points to the paradoxical conclusion that recognition of unsayability does not require total renunciation of language in order to arrive at some profound mystical silence, but is spoken and kept by language itself. ‘[N]ow language has captured in itself the power of silence, and that which appeared earlier as unspeakable “profundity” can be guarded (in its negative capacity) in the very heart of the word’ (Agamben Reference Agamben, Pinkus and Hardt1991: 14).
Looking back on Hegel's analysis in ‘Sense-Certainty’, we surmise how his complex understanding of language enables him to deal with the problem of the ineffable. While H. S. Harris correctly observes that Hegel follows Aristotle in saying that the particular qua particular is ineffable (Harris Reference Harris1997: 217), the crux of Hegel's account is that particularity is not as such inaccessible to or prior to language. It is on this point that Hegel surpasses the classical view of language and particulars, in Plato and Aristotle for example, who can only see particulars as ineffable material that should be left behind for the universality of logos. Language is for Hegel not just the realm of the universal in opposition to the realm of the particular. Language is itself particular and thereby has access to the realm of the particular. In the moment when discourse takes place, language becomes particular, and is thus able to indicate a particular by using an indexical. For Hegel's theory of language, the importance of this moment of incarnation, of the Word becoming Flesh, cannot be overstated.Footnote 14 Recognition of this moment provides counterweight to the prevalent tendency of reading Hegel's analysis in ‘Sense-Certainty’ in only one direction, namely from the particular to the universal. This tendency can for example be perceived in Jean Hyppolite: in his reading of Hegel he puts the spotlight on the turning of the particular into the universal concept. The result is that he neglects the significance of particularity, and even goes so far as to deny the unicity of the individual ‘I’, as the ‘I’ can supposedly only express a universal (Hyppolite Reference Hyppolite, Lawlor and Sen1997: 14). This unidirectional way of reading is not only one-sided, it repeats the myth that in Hegel's system the particular is ultimately subsumed under the universal and repressed by it. One should always read Hegel in two ways, in this case therefore also in the direction of the universal to the particular, i.e. the moment of incarnation.
V. Conclusion
Now that we have analysed Hegel's understanding of the ineffable in the context of the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter, we can generalize our findings. A general formulation of the dialectical structure that we perceived in this specific case contributes to a broader understanding of ineffability in Hegel's thought. A first aspect is the conformity between the movement that conceptual language enacts and the dialectic of the phenomenon itself, and therefore language's ability to express the truth of the phenomenon. What appears ineffable is, according to Hegel, not ineffable because conceptual language fails to convey real, immediate and positive presence. Negativity is not an external attribution by conceptual language to something that is in itself purely positive. Instead, language merely enacts, recollects and preserves the movement of negation that inheres in the thing itself. In other words, any form of consciousness that claims immediate, pre-conceptual insight is, on closer inspection, already an implicit form of discursive, dialectical mediation. The discursive constitution of ineffable experience may not be recognized as such, but discourse makes it explicit. To deliberately oppose mediation and conceptual language by clinging to the ineffable is therefore not to escape from the dialectic of language. It is as such an ill-fated attempt. It ends in its own destruction and in the final triumph of truth and language. Even the most radical defiance of language that draws the ultimate consequences—the retreat from the world of truth and community into the silent, private certainty of what cannot be said—is ultimately destined for the same negativity and death that language has already revealed as the truth and telos of the ineffable. There is, hence, no escaping the grasp of language.
A second, related aspect of Hegel's account is his recognition of the negativity that inheres in signification and language, and his interpretation of the ineffable in light of this negativity. Ineffability emerges when the inherent negativity in the dialectic is hypostasized as a mysterious presence which language cannot reach. But it is wrong to think of the ineffable as prior to or independent from the dialectic of language. The ineffable is neither extralinguistic nor extra-dialectical. If anything, the ineffable is a result of dialectical negation, and its negativity is always already expressed by language itself.
Hegel's system does not repress the ineffable, does not disavow the reality of what cannot be said. I therefore hope to have shown that, regarding Hegel's position on the ineffable, the ‘repression hypothesis’ is incorrect. The dialectic gives a truthful account of the negativity of what remains beyond conceptual discourse. But it cannot tolerate assertions of the independence of the ineffable outside of the dialectic, let alone veneration of its lofty, mystical content. Hegel incorporates what cannot be said by dialectically putting the negativity of the ineffable to work in service of the truth of language. In this connection, ineffability can neither presume independence nor opposition vis-à-vis the realm of conceptual language. Any position that bases itself on the affirmation of that which cannot be said, only places itself within Hegel's dialectic and not outside of it.
