The Conclusion of Hegel’s Logic:
From Objectivity to the Absolute Idea

James Kreines
jkreines@cmc.edu

 

Draft. Please cite from the final version forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Hegel, ed. Dean Moyar 

Hegel is difficult to interpret, and the Science of Logic especially difficult. The conclusion of the book centers on the transition to the last section, “The Idea”, and the transition to the last chapter in that section, “The Absolute Idea”. Of course, Hegel’s own terminology is among the considerable difficulties. But I think that it is possible to understand the arguments here, to give an account in independently accessible philosophical terms, and to uncover some strengths of lasting philosophical interest. I argue that there are two keys:

First, the Logic takes a kind of metaphysics as fundamental within philosophy. This is not to deny that Hegel addresses other topics, such as epistemology. But the Logic ultimately argues that other issues should be understood and addressed in metaphysical terms. So the Logic does not seek an epistemologically specified ultimate end, such as that of indubitable and foundational knowledge—making secondary the question of what, if any, metaphysics would serve that end. And the problems the Logic takes as basic, in the end, do not descend from those Kant seeks to resolve by means of the deductions of the Transcendental Analytic of the first Critique, concerning the relation between cognition or concepts and objects. The Logic will give priority rather to metaphysical problems drawn from Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic, and this provides the unity and philosophical force of the arguments that conclude the Logic.

Second, those who see a metaphysics in Hegel tend to see one that is specifically monistic, descended from Spinoza’s or from neo-Platonism. But I argue that the metaphysics at the end of the Logic is very different. I take “metaphysical foundationalism” to be the view that there is some sufficient reason or ground for everything, on which everything depends while it depends on nothing. Metaphysical monism is a specific version: the foundation is the One that everything is “in”. But Hegel’s own conclusions, I will argue, are no form of metaphysical foundationalism at all—neither a scientistic, theological, nor monistic form. There is, to be sure, something that is first in metaphysical priority: the absolute idea. But, as Hegel often says, the end is what is first: what is most mediated and even, in a sense, dependent (the end) is also first, or of highest metaphysical priority. But this claim is difficult, and requires much preparation.

1. Topic: Kant’s Dialectic and Hegel’s Metaphysics of Reason

In this section, I want to work from a connection to Kant towards a way of explaining the topic addressed by the end of the Logic in independently accessible philosophical terms. I begin with Kant’s account of the “faculty of reason” (Vernunft) in the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique. Kant here argues that we have an ineliminable need for a goal to guide or regulate the use of our theoretical faculties. The faculty of reason is supposed to provide this, insofar as it directs us away from incurious satisfaction with the surface of things, demanding that we instead assume for the sake of inquiry that things have further explanations, and to seek to find the conditions or grounds in terms of which they could be explained—and ultimately the unconditioned, where this is the notion of something to which one could appeal in explaining completely, or a complete explainer.[1] In the Dialectic’s technical terms, “ideas” are specifically ideas of the unconditioned (A334-7/B391-4). And Kant concludes, given the ineliminable guiding role of reason, that metaphysical questions about such ideas are inescapable for us (A421/B449). So there is an of inescapability of questions on the domain of the metaphysics of reason, as I will call it; those who pretend indifference to them are unknowingly assuming answers, if they continue to think at all (Ax).

But Kant also argues that we cannot answer those questions. He does so by arguing that all of the obvious approaches to the inescapable topic are unacceptable. First, we could hold that there must always be unconditioned grounds. This is one specific way of pursuing the metaphysics of reason: the rationalist way, built around the principle of sufficient reason (PSR).[2] Kant seeks to explain a kind of inevitable rational appeal of metaphysical rationalism, but in a manner demonstrating that philosophy should never assert such a view or draw such conclusions. For the Antinomy of Pure Reason argues that this view generates contradictions; rationalism can escape direct self-contradiction only in versions that both rest on principles like the PSR and yet would equally be undercut by those same principles—only in a “dogmatic stubbornness, setting its mind rigidly to certain assertions without giving a fair hearing to the grounds for the opposite” (A407/B434). Second, there are negative responses. But to deny the existence of any and all forms of the unconditioned would merely be the opposite form of dogmatism (A471/B499). And other forms of skepticism or indifferentism concerning the unconditioned are, Kant says, impossible, and anyway an unacceptable “euthanasia of pure reason” (A407/B433-4). So Kant concludes that a third response is necessary, one which is supposed to be radical and new. The full story of this resolution of the antinomy problems is the package of views that comprise transcendental idealism (A491/B519). For our purposes the crucial part of this package is the conclusion that we have strict epistemic limits—fixed by our sensibility and its pure forms, space and time. For from this it will follow that philosophy can legitimately conclude neither that there are any unconditioned grounds, nor that there are none. Thus philosophy cannot answer metaphysical questions, at least in this sense of “metaphysics” that is supposed to be of most direct and inescapable rational interest.[3]

Kant’s aim here is not to give up on theoretical philosophy; it is to transform it into a new kind of project—as pursued, for example, in the Transcendental Analytic consideration of the necessary conditions of the possibility of cognition of objects. (We need not resolve, for our purposes, whether the basic topic there is more narrowly epistemological—concerned with knowledge, justification, etc.—or more about issues we might now call “semantic”, concerning the very possibility of aboutness, objective purport, intentionality, etc.[4] For the sake of having a term, I call all such issues about relations between cognition and objects “broadly epistemological”.) What is important is that there are senses in which the new project is supposed to be a transformed version of “metaphysics”. For example, it is not empirical; it offers, in the face of doubts, a justification of the synthetic a priori.[5] So the new project seeks to “transform the accepted procedure of metaphysics” (Bxxii), and will take as basic such broadly epistemological notions as a priori. But note that the Dialectic does not merely presume anything like this priority of epistemology. It does not in particular argue from claims about our epistemic limits, because it could not then support such claims.[6] It argues that a more direct engagement with metaphysics is necessary, but then comes into conflict with itself, calling itself into question.  

Now Hegel will take on board much from Kant, before then diverging: Yes, it is necessary to directly engage the metaphysics of reason; skepticism or indifferentism about reason is unacceptable; metaphysics generates necessary conflicts; and these conflicts do end the prospects for pre-Kantian metaphysics. But Hegel will argue that the considerations of Kant’s Dialectic nonetheless support no epistemic limitations, and no exit from direct consideration of the metaphysics of reason—no transformation after which metaphysics would be engaged from the perspective of broadly epistemological issues. Considerations in Kant’s Dialectic are rather supposed to support a new and different constructive metaphysics of reason.

And so we can give an explanation of the topic at the end of the Logic, in a manner that clarifies Hegel’s terminology in independently accessible philosophical terms. The topic is metaphysics, in the sense of general and direct questions about why or because of things, about that in the world to which one would have to appeal in explaining and ultimately explaining completely. It concerns what Hegel calls “reason” (Vernünft) or “the rational” (das Vernünftige) “in the world”.[7] For example, according to this metaphysics of reason conception, the point of a materialist metaphysics would be this: reason is in the world only in a way in which everything real is (the materialist claims) grounded in basic matter, which is itself brute, lacking any further reason or grounds. But Hegel’s own specific view will not be materialist. Hegel seeks to argue that there is a more complete form of reason, or something to which one could appeal in explaining completely. Hegel , borrowing from Kant, calls this “the idea”. Kant would call it “the unconditioned”, and while Hegel sometimes borrows this last term, he also worries about it (EL §45). In part, Hegel worries that this term makes it too easy for Kant to connect the topic with specifically rationalist notions—such as substance as a substrate with attributes “in” it. To bring the overall ambition together in a main point, Hegel wants to argue that “the idea”, or completeness of reasons, must be understood in terms of unconditionedness in the different sense of a kind of active self-determination. Thus:

The idea is the rational (Vernünftige); - it is the unconditioned, because only that has conditions which essentially refers to an objectivity that it does not determine itself… (WL 6:463/671)

And Hegel will argue that, once “the idea” is better understood in this way, there will no longer be grounds for Kant’s claim that it is unknowable for us, and no sense in which attention to reason suggests any in principle limits to our knowledge at all.

Understanding the details requires travelling a long road. What is crucial at the start is that we resist the temptation to epistemologize the notion of “reason” and the corresponding project. For Hegel’s aim is to show that the Dialectic fails before it justifies Kant’s transformation of metaphysics, or the shift onto broadly epistemological ground, or ground of Kantian deductions, etc. So “reason” here is precisely not at base given content by notions like that of justification, as for example where one might give someone a justification for one’s claim, or ask for such justification, etc. And Hegel’s project is in this respect unlike one that would begin with a sense of “reasons” resting on a supposedly basic contrast between reasons and causes, or the normative and the nomological, or similar. Hegel’s arguments have implications concerning these topics—for what we would call “normativity”, for example—but he addresses these in terms of an underlying metaphysics, including issues about whether and how it might be possible to account for and justify a distinction between normative and non-normative forms of reason in the world, and a metaphysical priority for the former. Similarly, the ultimate aim is not epistemologically specifiable—for example as a priori results, independent of the empirical; the ultimate end lies more directly within metaphysics, even if the means must be in some senses an a priori method. And, finally, my point of stressing reason in the world is not to suggest any priority of either world or mind in addressing broadly epistemological questions about the possibility of cognition of objects; the point is that the basic issues lie elsewhere, with this at base metaphysical rather than epistemic notion of reason.  

To be sure, Hegel does agree with Kant that pre-Kantian philosophy is unacceptably dogmatic. But Hegel’s point is not what we would ordinarily expect from such agreement. It is not that the topic of Kant’s deductions is so fundamental that any philosophy without them implicitly assumes an unacceptably immediate identity of cognition and reality. It is not that pre-Kantian philosophy fails because it is not yet properly set on basis of such deductions. Rather, Hegel finds pre-Kantian philosophy dogmatic because it does not face directly its own assumptions about the metaphysics of reason in the world, and the ways that these generate the conflicts uncovered by Kant’s Dialectic. This emphasis on the Dialectic contradictions is what Hegel means in approaching metaphysics under the heading “logic”: “the dialectic makes up the very nature of thinking,” and “a cardinal aspect of logic” (EL §11R). And so Hegel’s Logic sees in Kant an “insight” crucial to an “elevation of reason to the loftier spirit of modern philosophy”; but this is not any insight about any need for Kant’s Analytic deductions; it is “insight into the necessary conflict” (WL 5:38–39/25–26)—the topic of the Dialectic. In some senses the Logic tests, at earlier points, projects more like Kant’s positive project; but these are supposed to fail until and unless they are finally reshaped or transformed by the way the end of the Logic recognizes a priority of metaphysics.[8]

So the project concluding at the end of the Logic will neither be a version of Spinoza’s rationalism, nor of Kant’s positive project in the Transcendental Analytic. It is more distinctively Hegel’s own: it is to use the supposedly negative or destructive considerations of Kant’s Dialectic critique of metaphysics for the purposes of reconstruction—to rebuild metaphysics on the grounds of the strongest criticism of it.

2. Defense and Application of the Concept Thesis: Mechanism and Teleology

The final sections of the Science of Logic are as follows:

THE DOCTRINE OF THE CONCEPT
. . .
B. Objectivity:
            (a) Mechanism
            (b) Chemism
            (c) Teleology
C. The Idea
            (a) Life
            (b) The Idea of Cognition
            (c) The absolute Idea

 

Here Hegel is, in part, concluding his defense of a basic thesis, which I would name and express in this way:

The concept thesis: the reasons which explain why things are as they are and do what they do are always found in immanent “concepts” (Begriffe), akin to immanent universals or kinds (Gattungen).[9]

Hegel will apply this thesis in such a manner as to distinguish different logics of different forms of reason in the world, or different sorts of immanent concepts or Begriffe. First, take something which behaves lawfully, as with the rotation of the planets discussed in “Mechanism”: why does it do what it does? On account of immanent “concepts” in the sense of the natures of such things which make them what they are, and more specifically the powers that such things have in virtue of this nature of their kind. For example, the planets rotate on account of gravitation being the nature of matter, or because “gravitation is the true and determinate concept of material corporeality” (PN §269). Second, take a living being, as discussed in “Life”: why does it do what it does? On account of the “concept” in the sense of the biological species or kind, and more specifically the distinctive ways in which its species seeks the immanent end of self-preservation. Third, take the sorts of beings who can more specifically grasp concepts and so engage in cognition: why do we do what we do? On account of our immanent “concept,” the concept of “spirit”, which turns out to be not just any concept but “the concept”, and whose content turns out to be freedom.

On this account, immanent concepts—at least in the case of nature—are discovered by the natural sciences. But defense of the concept thesis itself is a different matter. Here Hegel gives, within metaphysics, a distinctly philosophical defense, arguing that the thesis is inescapable for any possible philosophy: the considerations which most seem to threaten it will in fact turn out to support it. For Hegel, the most important such case comes near the conclusion of the Logic, in the “Mechanism” chapter. But the way to understand this is as concluding a line of argument begun earlier, excluding different ways of avoiding the concept thesis:

First, Hegel draws everywhere on the idea that explanation must be, at least in part, subject to a kind of worldly constraint. Explaining why things are as they are or do what they do requires more than formulating a way of describing things that seems explanatory to some audience. This perhaps clearest where Hegel notes kinds of accounts—like those in astrology or phrenology[10]—which might seem compelling in context of some audiences, but cannot truly explain in any context at all.

Second, one of course try to understand the worldly constraint on explanation without any appeal to reason in the world at all. One might understand explanation rather in terms of what Hegel calls, earlier in the Logic, “formal ground”. On this kind of view, successful explanation would not require anything in the world over and above what happens or how things actually develop—or the facts which make true a description with a certain form, such as that of a universal generalization. But the Logic argues that such grounds would have to be “a mere formalism, the empty tautology of repeating,” where nothing is “explained by this formalism” (WL 6:98/400). For noting that something regularly happens is not to explain why it happens, but just to repeat that it happens in this case as well as others. So there are grounds to conclude, with Hegel, that the worldly constraint on explanation would have to be understood in terms of something over and above the happenings or developments to be explained—in terms of a reason for them. Reason in the world, then, is the metaphysical side of explanation.[11] For example, take accounts of our behavior in terms of bumps on skulls. Someone might gerrymander their way to correlations between certain bump-shapes and certain behavior. But no such correlations would explain, regardless of audience, because they fail to identify any real form of reason in the world; behavior is in fact “indifferent” (Gleichgültig)[12] to gerrymandered bump-shapes on the skull, where “indifference” means the lack of any form reason in the world.

Third, one could grant an understanding of explanation in terms of reason in the world, but seek to avoid the conclusion that the reasons for things are specifically concepts. This is where Hegel sees a crucial competitor in appeals to mechanism. The idea would be what I call “pure” or “conceptless” mechanism: for any whole object, a supposed nature or concept of this kind of whole will be of no explanatory relevance to what it does; all the explanatory work would be done insofar as every whole is mechanistic, or (in Kant’s terms) the “product of the parts and of their forces and their capacity to combine by themselves” (KU 5:408). But Hegel argues that pure mechanism undercuts its own coherence. With pure mechanism each and every object 

…points for its determinateness outside and beyond itself, constantly to objects for which it is however likewise a matter of indifference that they do the determining… (WL 6:412/633)

So no way of redescribing, breaking things down into wholes and parts, would be privileged over or better than any other when it comes to explaining, and all would be equally arbitrary or a matter of subjective preference. All would be equally indifferent. Note that Hegel’s argument does not assume that everything can be explained completely, and then criticize mechanism with this assumed but question-begging standard.[13] Pure mechanism sets the standard by which it fails, in arguing that appeal to immanent concepts are superfluous because the real explanation is rather always mechanistic. No one can coherently make that proposal, because by his own lights, “…to explain the determination of an object, and to this end to extend the representation of it beyond it, is only an empty word” (WL 6:412/633).[14]

Fourth, one might think that this mechanism argument leaves open the real competitor to Hegel’s immanent concepts, namely, mechanistic forces or laws as a kind of “real ground” external to what they explain. But the Logic has already shown that this is the other side a dilemma, along with “formal ground” above. The point is that it is impossible to make sense of the reasons for things—and so of explanation—at this earlier stage of the Logic, prior to the development of the metaphysics of immanent concepts concluding the Logic. We would in particular need immanent concepts of such external forces or laws themselves, if we are to account for the explanatory import of these. So avoiding immanent concepts by positing forces or laws as real or external grounds makes no progress, and would leave us wanting to posit unknown further grounds for grounds, and so on forever (WL 6:102/402).

Thus Hegel draws his metaphysical conclusion: there are reasons for things, over and above what happens (contra “formal ground”), but (contra “real ground”) they are rooted in immanent concepts. With respect to mechanistic cases specifically, the result is what I call “reasonable” mechanism: some things (not all) are explicable in mechanistic terms, in terms of laws, in virtue of the immanent concept of matter. Hegel’s central example is the rotation of the solar system. First, this has a reason in the world (“its reason”):

The movement of the solar system is governed by unalterable laws; these laws are its reason. But neither the sun nor the planets which revolve around it are conscious of them… [T]here is reason in nature…[15]

And the law that is its reason is rooted in the immanent concept of matter, which is gravitation. With respect to these rotating material bodies, then, “law is indeed immanent in them and it does constitute their nature and power,” as Hegel puts it at the end of “Mechanism” (WL 6:428/644).

With this sketch of the defense in hand, we can now turn to the application of the concept thesis. The most important issues concern the possibility of a teleological and so normative form of immanent concept. Hegel raises the central problem here in the “Teleology” chapter, near the conclusion of the Logic. We tend to think that it is enough, to introduce teleology into an otherwise lawful or necessity-governed world, to introduce conscious representations of purposes or ends as efficient causes. And since the rise of the modern sciences, philosophers have tended to want to restrict teleology to cases involving such representations. But Hegel argues for the contrary view he traces to Aristotle:

With regard to the purpose, one should not immediately or should not merely think of the form in which it is in consciousness…  in the representation. (EL #204Anmerkung).

Hegel, drawing on a distinction from Kant, calls this “external” teleology. And Hegel argues that, if the world were otherwise entirely necessity-governed, then the addition of external teleology, or “the subjective purpose”, would be a matter of “objective indifference” (Gleichgültigkeit) with respect to what happens (WL 6:447/658)—such purposes would not be the reason for anything at all. So if there are any teleological forms of reason in the world (including the purposive behavior of intelligent agents), then there must be at least some form of teleology independent of such causation by external subjective representations of ends—there must be also what Kant calls “inner purposiveness”.[16]

This is to raise a problem, because Kant’s own point about this is largely skeptical. True, Kant argues that we judge organisms in terms of inner purposiveness, or as “natural purposes” (Naturzwecke), and that such judgment plays an ineliminable guiding role; but it is impossible (Kant argues) for us to know whether there is any such thing as a Naturzweck or any real inner purposiveness.[17]

Crucial to Kant’s case is his insight that we cannot analyze teleology in metaphysically deflationary terms—say, as just one among many of our explanatory practices, or ways of describing the structure of things or how they in fact develop. To simplify Kant’s example, the arctic ecosystem developed in such a way that seals benefit humans. Deflationary accounts constraining only structure or development will be subject to examples like this, where they can be forced to hold that this development of benefit justifies finding a teleological kind of intelligibility, concluding that the telos of seals is to benefit humans. But the fact of benefit justifies no such teleology (KU 5:369). This is clearest in considering the normativity that comes with teleology (EE 20:240): clearly benefit does not justify the conclusion that seals have the normative function of benefiting humeans, so that those evading capture are malfunctioning.  Thus for real teleology, something is required over and above a structure with benefits, namely a specific kind of reason for this structure: beneficial parts must be present because of their benefit in relation to the whole.[18] The obvious way that this requirement could be met is by artifacts that are the product of external design. For example, a gear in a watch comes to be present because of its benefit in relation to the way the whole serves the designer’s end of reliable indication of the time (KU 5:374). This makes the watch a purpose or Zweck. But for the inner purposiveness of a Naturzweck, there is a second requirement: purpose must be not imposed from without, but stem from the parts within the system.[19]

The problem is that we cannot, Kant argues, know these two requirements to be jointly met. With respect to organisms specifically, it is obvious but entirely insufficient that they in fact develop a structure in which the parts benefit the self-preservation of the whole. What matters is rather the reason why, or the because responsible of this development. The candidate systems that we know about come into existence in a temporal process, and the beneficial relation of parts to whole does not exist prior to that process. The problem is, then, how parts can initially come to be present because of their later relation to the whole. The analysis of teleology does not require this because to be any kind of efficient causality. But, with the temporal origin of the systems we know about, the analysis can be met (Kant argues) only where a system is the product of design, or some prior intelligent representation of the role to be played by the parts.[20] Further, inner purposiveness, given that the systems we know about are made of matter, would then require matter itself to represent ends and organize itself in accordance—which is impossible (KU 5:383). There is no evading this argument by returning to a deflationary analysis which does not constrain the reason why the parts are present, given cases like the arctic above. So Kant concludes that we cannot know that any system has true inner purposiveness. We can only think that a higher form of intellect might have knowledge of “supersensible real ground of nature” (5:409), and think that this ground might make possible an inner purposiveness that we could neither understand nor know.

Hegel will respond in the “Life” chapter at the conclusion of the Logic.[21] The chapter’s three sections consider systems meeting three requirements: systems (i) organized in a manner that supports self-preservation in the senses of (ii) extracting something needed from outside itself, and (iii) the reproduction within kind or species (Gattung).[22] Hegel agrees with Kant that we do in fact think of organisms, which meet these criteria, in terms of inner purposiveness. But the key is that we also take the nature of the reproducing type, kind, or species as the very substance of the token or individual. And this species or kind (Hegel argues) would be a distinct teleological form of “concept” (Begriff).[23] So inner purposiveness will seem to be an “incomprehensible mystery”, until and unless we “grasp the concept … as the substance of life” (WL 6:472/678). For if the kind or concept is the substance of an organism, then there is a sense in which we can know organisms to be self-producing: they are the product of something the same in kind or concept.[24] And a token part or “member” of such an organism will the product its own role in the whole—the product of the beneficial work of its own part (type) in the whole (type). So this type/token intimacy—the sense in which the kind is the very substance of the instance—would make such systems meet Kant’s analysis of inner purposiveness.

Granted, that we think in such terms about organisms would be no proof that they are so. But what Hegel shows is that the best reason to doubt inner purposiveness—Kant’s skeptical argument—in fact supports it. For Kant’s argument looks to artifacts to establish a demanding standard for teleology. If Kant says that a gear in a watch is present because of its contribution within the whole, then the “its” can refer at once to the token gear and the designer’s representation of its type. And this type-token intimacy (Hegel shows) establishes real and knowable inner purposiveness. Strictly speaking, the Philosophy of Nature discusses empirical facts about actual living beings; but what is needed for this Logic argument will be uncontroversial, since organisms clearly do assimilate and reproduce. 

Hegel’s conclusion is a kind of compatibilism: Within living beings there is stuff which does what it does because of its lawful, non-teleological natures or concepts; there is an “indifference” to “purpose” (WL 5:482/685). But there is a further teleological reason why just such stuff is present in just such an arrangement—namely, the contribution made to the inner purpose or telos of self-preservation. So this defense of natural teleology requires no claim that all matter as such is teleological. Nor any claim to know anything like a supersensible substrate of all matter or nature. But this is not to say that Hegel’s view is non-metaphysical or entirely deflationary. Hegel does not dismiss or unask the metaphysical questions concerning something over and above the structure of a system or development—namely, the reason for this structure or development; he does not, in particular, mistakenly say that the metaphysical questions could concern only efficient causes, or only something irrelevant to teleology.[25] Hegel’s view is that the metaphysical issues must be faced, but can be resolved with a case for a metaphysics of immanent concepts that are teleological, and so a teleological—and normative, in the associated sense—form of reason in the world.

3. The Idea: Explanatory Completeness

The metaphysics of Hegel’s concept thesis, however, leave us still short of the extent of his metaphysical ambitions. For the purposes of understanding these ambitions, we tend nowadays to worry both too much and also too little about the kind of metaphysics above. We worry too much in that we overestimate the threat from fundamentally epistemological concerns, such as the worry that we could not have knowledge in metaphysics, or that our concepts in metaphysics have not been (or could not be) shown to have any genuine relation to objects. Hegel has powerful reasons for brushing such worries aside: First, such worries should generalize, affecting equally any other domain: they will be no reason to prefer epistemology, transcendental reflection, natural science, or anything else over metaphysics.[26] For example, taking such worries to require Kantian deductions as basis for metaphysics would be like, Hegel says, wanting to learn to swim before getting in the water (§10Anmerk). A second reason for brushing such concerns aside is that the supposed alternatives to metaphysics (Hegel argues) are in fact built on metaphysical assumptions. For example, it is a “fundamental delusion in scientific empiricism” is that it merely presupposes its own empiricist metaphysics (§38Anmerk). 

But we also worry too little, in that we tend nowadays to undersestimate the threat from Kant’s Dialectic. Kant’s argument calls metaphysics generally into question. It does not only target the metaphysics of otherworldly objects, like immaterial souls or gods, or the supersensible in that specific sense.[27] Even a metaphysics of ordinary objects is supposed to involve claims about the reasons rendering them explicable, and thereby also (at least implicitly) raising questions about the completeness of such reasons. But such issues lead to conflicts internal to metaphysics, even—as in the first two or “mathematical” antinomies—where the topic is limited to the spatio-temporal (A530/B558). Kant’s claim is that the only solution must involve his epistemic limits, preventing philosophy from answering some questions that it inescapably raises.

Taking this Kantian worry so seriously is the basic reason why Hegel needs a systematic metaphysics that relates everything to the completeness of reason—or “the idea”. To instead claim to sidestep the worry of the antinomies would be, on Hegel’s view, a pre-critical reversion from Kant. Thus Hegel, although following Aristotle on many particulars, also holds that everything in metaphysics must be reconstructed, as an organized whole, on grounds drawn from Kant’s Dialectic. So it is no surprise that Aristotle is supposed to lack the required systematicity (e.g. VGP 19:133/2:118).

And Hegel takes the problem to require a distinctive method in response: We must directly consider incomplete forms of reason in the world, which trigger antinomy problems. But we must not conclude that a contrasting completeness of explanation would be wholly other or beyond this, and knowable or understandable only by a higher intellect. This would be a kind of “abstract negation”, as opposed to Hegel’s favored determinate negation.[28] We must rather draw, out of the problem with incomplete reasons, incrementally better candidate accounts of more complete forms of reason.

I turn, then, to Hegel’s account of a form of incomplete reason, in the “Chemism” chapter.[29] Hegel is not here addressing what we think of as chemistry specifically[30]; he is addressing whatever kinds or concepts fundamentally interact lawfully.[31]

Hegel argues that to be this kind of thing is to interact lawfully in certain ways with other kinds; each kind of lawful thing, then, “is not comprehensible from itself, and the being of one object is the being of another” (WL 6:430/646). From here, Hegel quickly reaches a kind of metaphysical holism of the lawful: to be lawful kind X is to react with Y, and so on to Z and a whole interconnected network of kinds and laws. The “determinateness” of anything lawful is just one “moment” of a larger “whole” or concept of the whole: it “is the concrete moment of the individual concept of the whole which is the universal essence, the real kind [Gattung] of the particular objects” (WL 6:430/646)

The philosophical pressure towards this kind of metaphysical holism has often been noted more recently, even while holism is often resisted. Chalmers is an example:

…physical theory only characterizes its basic entities relationally… One might be attracted to the view of the world as pure causal flux, with no further properties for the causation to relate, but this would lead to a strangely insubstantial view of the physical world.[32]

And there is in fact a kind of antinomy here. The thesis would demand, as Chalmers does, that there must be something more to reality than just relations. The antithesis would deny that there can be anything more.

To understand Hegel’s response to the problem, we need to note how he argues throughout earlier parts of the Logic against the positing of metaphysical “substrata”. In short, metaphysicians tend think that substrata in order to support things. But substrata would (Hegel argues) turn out to be merely “indifferent” (Gleichgültig), or no form of reason in the world, and no support for anything.[33] For example, we expect a substratum of any lawful X to be required to support the possibility of X standing in lawful relations with any Y. But this appeal would justify, at most, more relations: the relation of support between the substratum and X’s relation to Y. The substratum itself remains indifferent, and no need for support, or any kind of reason, justifies positing it. The demand for substrata always rests, rather, on a demand that reality must include something to correspond to the subject of subject-predicate judgment. This Hegel takes to be the root of early modern metaphysics of substance, taking substance to be a kind of “subject” (as in subject-predicate judgment) that attributes can be “in”. Hegel calls this “the metaphysics of the understanding”, or of the faculty of judgment.[34] But, first, such metaphysics provides no justification for the demand that reality correspond to judgments (EL §28Anmerk). Furthermore, Hegel argues that the pre-Kantian metaphysics raising antinomy problems must persist so long as we confuse the demands of the understanding (for correspondence to the form of judgment) and of reason (for complete reasons):

The metaphysics of the past . . . is always on hand, as the perspective of the understanding alone on the objects of reason. (EL §27)

Hegel argues that Kant’s response to the antinomies is a retreat back to the perspective of the understanding, which then requires Kant to restrict reason. But Hegel engages directly with the form of metaphysics considered in Kant’s Dialectic account of reason, and finds no grounds for letting the perspective of the understanding stand in the way of resolving those problems from the perspective of reason alone.

We can now see the distinction between two kinds of responses in Hegel to worries about the insubstantiality of lawful reality:

First, with respect to substrata: Lawful reality is perfectly real—it is not an illusion—but any lawful X lacks a substratum of lawful relations with others, and is insubstantial in this respect.

Second, there is the very different issue of whether there is anything to X in itself that is a reason why X reacts specifically as it does with Y, etc. Here Hegel’s response is more complicated. On the one hand, Hegel again answers in the negative: within the lawful, the search for the reason proceeds out of X, to Y, and so on, without completion of the regress. There is no completion even in the whole. For even the whole web of lawful relations is itself dependent on there being (“posited”) differentiated parts (WL 4:430/646). This is a real incompleteness of reason. It is a counter-example to the rationalists’ PSR.[35] On the other hand, however, Hegel does see here a real problem—some truth to the other side of the antinomy problem. For theoretical inquiry seeks a complete reason, and must presuppose for the sake of inquiry that there is such a thing. So theoretical inquiry must conclude that there is at least something else with the determinate features, lacking in the lawful, which would make for greater explanatory completeness. This is the systematic ground which requires the Logic to turn, after “Chemism”, towards teleology.[36]

We saw above Hegel’s arguments that teleology requires inner purposiveness (“Teleology”, the last chapter before “The Idea” section), and defending inner purposiveness (“Life”, the first chapter in “The Idea” section). Now we know the point of this ordering: the inner purposiveness of life first provides any explanatory completeness. Or, “the idea is, first of all, life” (WL 6:468/675). To see why, contrast Hegel’s account of a living being with the explanatory regress of the lawful. Why does a tiger, for example, have the capacity to catch the deer that it eats? It is not the case that the only answer is: all that it is to be this kind of tiger is to catch deer of this kind. Nor is the only answer the one that would follow the regress into the underlying lawful kinds of stuff and a network of laws. For there is a kind of explanatory anchor with the tiger itself: it has claws, and the power to slice, and this underlying constitution, because of the contribution that all this makes to the tiger’s own immanent end of self-preservation. The inner purposiveness of an organism allows its nature to be found in the determinate ways that it relates to the environment, without its nature being merely dissolved away into external relations. And so it allows for greater explanatory completeness, and a kind of greater substantiality in this respect. Thus the Phenomenology says that an animal is “the real end [Zweck] itself… [I]t preserves itself in the relation to an other” (PhG §256); a lower-level thing “gets lost” (PhG §246). The Logic says that “cause” in the sense of “blind necessity” must “pass over into its other and lose its originality”;

The purpose, by contrast, is posited as in itself the determinacy… does not pass over … but instead preserves itself… (EL §204Anmerk).

From the account of the immanent purposiveness of life, then, that we can abstract our way to an understanding of Hegel’s more general account of explanatory completeness or “the idea”—and with it his replacement for substrata accounts of the metaphysics of substance. We need only abstract away from life’s specific inner purpose of self-preservation. In general, only some inner purpose is required. I would express the resulting theory in this way:

The idea = a reciprocal process of concept and individual instances sufficient to establish the concept as the substance of an individual, and thereby some inner purpose.

So the idea in general requires an account of a concept with the special relationship to individual instances in which it gives them their substance. And that is why “the idea” cannot be understood as only as one half of that relationship. Thus the canonical formulations of the material introducing the section titled “The Idea”: “the idea is the unity of the concept and objectivity” or “the unity of concept and reality.”[37] In general, the idea involves

the concept that distinguishes itself from its objectivity—but an objectivity which is no less determined by it and possesses its substantiality only in that concept. (WL 6:466/673)

Recall that life is (on Hegel’s account) something dependent in a certain respect: life is dependent for its existence on something underlying with an “indifference … to purpose” (WL 5:482/685), and so not something interfering with the explanatory completeness of teleology. This carries several important implications about “the idea” in general.

First, it means that Hegel is not arguing that everything real is just a realization of the idea. The idea, as in the case of life, is realized in what is not the idea. There is reality that is “finite”, specifically in the respect that it does not involve the above unity of concept and objectivity, or falls short of the idea. This, Hegel says, is the topic of the “Objectivity” section prior to “The Idea”:

Finite things are finite because, and to the extent that, they do not possess the reality of their concept completely within them but are in need of other things for it… (WL 6:465/672)

Further, Hegel is arguing against a conception of explanatory completeness as that which is depended upon without itself being dependent—as something like a substance in the sense of a substratum. He is aiming for a more positive conception of reason and its completeness: not in terms of a lack of dependence, but in terms of concepts with explanatory import of their own—a kind of self-determination. If the latter standard is met, then dependence on an indifferent substrate does not matter.

And, more radically still, Hegel is arguing not just that life or this or that actual form of the idea is in fact dependent; he is arguing for the philosophical conclusion that anything completely explicable must necessarily be dependent. Inner purposiveness depends on or is “mediated” by an indifferent, realizing substrate. The lawful substrate gets lost in relations. Inner purposiveness must use this substrate. If inner purposiveness were instead supposed to have a primitive or “immediate” power to interact with certain chemical substances, then it would itself be drawn into the mere regress of the lawful, losing its explanatory completeness:

In an immediate connection with that object, purpose would itself enter into the sphere of mechanism and chemism and would therefore be subject to accidentality and to the loss of its determining vocation. (WL 6:452/663)

That is why the idea in general, and not just in the case of life, must be a process, dependent on there being some substrate indifferent to the idea, in order to realize the process (WL 6:467–68/674).

On my view, then, there can be no route back from Hegel’s arguments to a rationalist monism, on which there is a sufficient reason for everything provided by a substance that is a substrate in which everything inheres, but itself depends on nothing. Metaphysics, Hegel argues, cannot rest on any such notion of substance that it might take as basic, as in the accounts considered at the end of the “Doctrine of Essence”.[38] On the contrary, substance too must be reconsidered, accounted for in terms of “the concept” and ultimately “the idea”, or explanatory completeness. But to say that the idea is the substance of things is, again, not to say that it is everything. As we have seen, lawful reality is insubstantial even though it is real—not a mere subjective illusion or semblance. The substantial begins when we come to life. And Hegel’s point is that all substance must be built out of the insubstantial. This is one form of the proposal that what is metaphysically prior comes at the end, and is mediated or dependent on something earlier.

Similarly, “something has truth only in so far as it is idea” (WL 6:462/670). But Hegel distinguishes “correctness” from the special notion of “truth” that he reconstructs in terms of the metaphysics of reason (WL 6:318/562). So, in short: We find the idea where we have an inner purpose, and so a normative standard, set by a concept so intimately related to particular individuals that it gives them their substance; “truth” is agreement of an object with its own immanent standard. Some things are not the idea, having no immanent concept as standard, so there cannot even be any question of their being “true”. So where “finite things are finite”, because they do not have concepts providing their very substance, this is their “untruth” (WL 6:465/672).

Also similar is Hegel’s claim that we must “regard everything as being actual only to the extent that it has the idea in it and expresses it” (WL 6:464/671). But the term “actual” does not mean everything that happens to exist; Hegel’s term “discriminates … what truly merits the name ‘actuality’” (EL §6). “The actual” (das Wirkliche) is supposed to be what is effective or what produces (das Wirkende) (EL §163Anmerk). Lawfully interacting kinds, for example, exist but have only the barest trace of borrowed actuality, since each is an effective reason only on account of relations to others—they are but the barest trace of the idea. Only full forms of “the idea” are fully actual.  

4. The Absolute Idea, Method, and the Conclusion of the Logic

There are two especially important openings for rejoinder. The first concerns Hegel’s metaphysics itself: The Kantian might object that all this so far concerns only explanatory completeness that is relatively greater. But the Transcendental Dialectic is ultimately concerned with absolute endpoints of inquiry. Perhaps a Hegelian could respond that explanatory completeness greater than anything allowed in Kant’s Antinomies is enough to counter Kant. But Hegel himself clearly accepts the challenge, seeking to account for the metaphysics of what he calls “the absolute idea.”

The case of life makes the problem clear, because there are clearly limits to its explanatory completeness. There are many different ways in which different species could seek the end of self-preservation. And the general idea of life does nothing to explain why multiple, diverse forms or species should be actually realized in the world, nor which ones should be; this has no explanation or reason, on Hegel’s account.[39] One could imagine that something more powerful might somehow close those explanatory gaps. But Hegel’s challenge is provide an explanation of how.

The Logic’s first proposal, in “The Idea of Cognition”, is that explanatory completeness might be provided by an individual, X, with the capacity for theoretical cognition. But if we leave it at that, then what would do the philosophical work of privileging X would not be X itself, but rather a special, supposedly higher object beyond it: “the true” (WL 6:487/697ff.). The same applies to a special power of willing, and a special supposed object of it, the good (WL 6:541/729ff.). Either way, the metaphysical priority of X would not be explained, but only presupposed in positing the higher object.

The Logic’s solution, in the final chapter, “The absolute Idea”, is this: Go back to the idea as life and add a sort of thinking of itself which (Hegel argues) thereby makes the immanent purpose no longer self-preservation but rather a sort of freedom. So:

The absolute idea = any reciprocal process of concept or kind and individual where thinking or reflection establishes freedom as immanent purpose.

The freedom here is a sense in which realizations of this concept would be not merely determined by that concept—their substance—behind their back, as it were; such a case would be what it is because its concept or Begriff would not just be in itself, in that last sense, but also for itself. So, relative to the initial proposals about the good and the true, the Logic needs “a turning back to life”, but without the “immediacy” of life or its lack of the for itself. This is supposed to make possible a variety of “the idea” which now, unlike life, explains diversity out of itself, or “harbors the most extreme opposition within” (WL 6:548/735). And this absolute idea is what just what was missing in “Life”: “the free kind [Gattung] for itself” (EL §222).

Now one illustration of the gist here will come later in the Encyclopedia, with the theory of spirit. There we will get a case that the concept or Begriff of human beings is freedom, and that this explains from itself, first, the emergence of conflict and so diversity in the way in which human beings organize themselves, and, second, a kind of directionality to our development toward forms of social life that realize freedom.[40] But for the Logic, nothing specifically about human beings as such matters. What is important is rather the case of whatever might think through the argument of the Logic itself. So the Logic distinguishes the topic that “belongs to the doctrine of spirit proper” from “[t]he idea of spirit which is the subject matter of logic”, or “the logical idea of spirit” (WL 6:496/695–96). Spirit (in this logical sense) is what thinks, and so entangles itself in the problems of philosophy, and in this way generates from itself the distinctions between different steps along the way of the Logic, until it comes to the conclusion that its kind or concept is a free thinking which realizes the absolute idea. If we can think through this process, then the absolute idea is real.

This is also what Hegel means in emphasizing the definite articles in the idea (die Idee), and the concept (der Begriff). There are many forms of concept, but others turn out to be lesser forms of the absolute case of the concept, the concept of freedom: “The concept is the free, as the substantial power that is for itself” (EL §160). And all forms of the idea are lesser forms of this absolute form: “the idea” is “the free concept, the concept determining itself and thereby determining itself as reality” (EL §213Anm).

And this is what is meant by Hegel’s famous claims that substance must be understood as subject or spirit.[41] The point is not to accept Spinoza’s claim that there is a single substance/substrate “in” which everything real inheres, adding only that this is a subject or spirit. For Hegel’s absolute idea is no substrate at all. Nor is it an individual. It is a process or movement, and one connecting a universal kind and particular individuals. And Hegel denies that everything real is just a form of the absolute idea, holding that this process is realized in something not the absolute idea, or spirit in the logical sense.

But there is a second obvious opening for rejoinder. And this is now a distinctive form of epistemological problem raised by Hegel’s metaphysics. In short, the issues raised in Kant’s Dialectic concern, on Kant’s account, the ideas of reason as guiding theoretical inquiry. Hegel responds with a metaphysics on which it is not the case that everything truly realizes the absolute idea. But from Kant’s point of view, then, the guidance of reason would seem to leave inquiry on some domains, such as that of the lawful, simply hopeless—in that it could not possibly reach its guiding goal.

Note, however, that Kant faces a similar problem. On Kant’s view, we can never reach knowledge of anything unconditioned. Why then is inquiry not hopeless? Kant argues that our inquiry can at least make progress, heading in the direction that would, if we could follow completely, satisfy reason—progressing “asymptotically, as it were, i.e., merely by approximation” (A663/B691).[42]

Now reconsider the problem for Hegel: True, Hegel’s metaphysics allows the lawful neither to be nor to metaphysically depend upon the absolute idea. Still, Hegel’s account opens up a different way of accounting for the epistemological side of explanation—the sense in which finding explanations should produce insight into or understanding of the world.[43] For explaining in lawful cases could produce such understanding in virtue of an approximation of the lawful, for example, to the absolute idea. So even chemism falls short in way shown, in the Logic, to suggest the right direction, or being on the way: chemism “is not yet for itself that totality of self-determination” (WL 6:429/645).

In the end, then, Hegel advocates two different forms of the priority of the absolute idea:

Metaphysical priority: the absolute idea is the absolutely complete form of reason in the world, and so prior in a metaphysics of reason.

Epistemological priority: all intelligibility of everything depends on the intelligibility of the absolute idea.

If “idealism” refers to any claim for a priority of any form of idea or mind, then these are both a metaphysical and an epistemological form of “idealism”. The latter view is also a form of epistemological monism, because it requires that the intelligibility of anything requires its fitting a system of knowledge that would relate everything to the absolute idea. The conclusion of the Logic gives this epistemological monism a striking formulation in claiming that “the method” discussed here is that of theoretical inquiry generally. The point is this: In pursuing theoretical inquiry on some domain we are seeking the rational or the absolute idea there. We can reach explanatory satisfaction to different degrees on different domains. But no limit here is an epistemic limit of ours; it would stem from the metaphysical incompleteness of some domains. And whatever satisfaction we reach anywhere will be only in finding there at least an approximation of the idea. Finding laws of nature would be one step in a process that, if carried farther through, would have to turn into an inquiry looking very different on the surface: it would have to find in its results contradictions, which point to something more complete, until we come to the absolute idea thinking itself. There is supposed to be a natural progression here from what would begin as empirical, and end up a priori in the sense that the method in the Logic and its results would be independent regardless of any initiating empirical details. So physics may be complete relative to its own purposes, but it also raises further questions that reason cannot ignore. Thus, the Logic pursues

…the method proper to each and every fact… It is therefore not only the highest force of reason, or rather its sole and absolute force, but also reason’s highest and sole impulse to find and recognize itself through itself in all things. (WL 6:551–52/737)

Note the way in which this explains Hegel’s famous claims about circular structure: Philosophy itself is a form of rational inquiry; so it seeks the end of reason, or complete reason in the world.[44] Thus it must necessary begin by at least by presupposing, for the sake of inquiry, that three is some complete form of reason to be sought. The Logic’s final account of the absolute idea and philosophical method is supposed to justify (and in this sense mediate) that initially unjustified (or immediate) presupposition:

By virtue of the nature of the method just indicated, the science presents itself as a circle that winds around itself, where the mediation winds the end back to the beginning. (WL 6:571/751)

But the point here crucially concerns epistemic necessity. There is no claim for the existence of the rationalists’ metaphysically necessary substance, a subject containing the predicate of existence, as a beginning or ground on which everything depends. Rather, the point is that the beginning is not arbitrary, but a standpoint necessary for philosophy as a form of theoretical inquiry; and this must lead, through contradictions, to their resolution with the absolute idea.

Finally, this overall argument of the Logic is supposed to establish a kind of “absolute knowledge.” The point is that there is no in-principle limit to our access to explanatory knowledge. So the view is not that we can know every fact all at once—let alone just by reading the Logic.[45] We can through reading the Logic gain knowledge of a form of absolute idea—of spirit, in the logical sense involving thinking through the Logic itself; this is knowledge of “the concept that comprehends itself conceptually” (WL 6:572/752). And in all other cases that fall short of this, including the rotation of matter in the solar system and the growth of living beings, also generate contradictions that connect consideration of them back up with the absolute and the case of spirit. This need not include a supposed explanation for anything like a complete reason for the location and features of every material particle in the universe. For Hegel denies that there is always complete explanation for everything, leaving no reasons unknowable where there are no reasons. Still, whatever follows and comprehends the path of the Logic can know itself as spirit in the logical sense and the absolute idea. Thus, Hegel says, where he glosses the point to be made in the last chapter of the Logic:

spirit recognizes the idea as its absolute truth . . . the infinite idea . . . which is the absolute knowledge of itself. (WL 6:469/675)

Conclusion

We can now consider the bearing of this material, from the conclusion of the Logic, on other recently popular interpretative approaches to Hegel. I have many debts to members of all of the groups I will mention, which I have tried to note above. But I have argued that understanding the end of the Logic requires rejecting a point on which most everyone seems to agree, namely: Hegel’s engagement internally with Kant’s philosophy need not (and does not) involve taking as a basis any broadly epistemological concerns, from Kant or otherwise. Some, a first group, think that Hegel fails to so engage with epistemological concerns, and so begs the question against Kant; they usually take Hegel to be a metaphysical monist.[46] Others think that Hegel does manage to argue from epistemological considerations. Some, a second ground, think that he gives an epistemological argument for metaphysical monism. For example, knowledge would require no gap between subject and object, which would both have to be in the One.[47] Others still, a third group, see Hegel as basing his project on more deflationary epistemological considerations, arguing for an epistemological fallibilism and/or coherentism, which is supposed to lead to a more modest form of ontological holism.[48]

It is worth saying something more about a fourth kind of approach, descendent from Pippin’s breakthrough Hegel’s Idealism (1989). Of the alternatives, this best captures something I think crucial: the way Hegel’s project draws its considerable philosophical strengths from the way it is unified by a metaphilosophical commitment, about what is basic in philosophy. But, compared to my proposals above, this Kantian account sees the opposite metaphilosophical details: Hegel is supposed to take as “basic to his project” issues with a unifying “common theme”—“the argument that any subject must be able to make certain basic discriminations in any experience in order for there to be experience at all” (1989, 7-8). More recent versions might substitute for “experience” a concern with conditions of the possibility of any relation between concept and object, of the normativity of concept use, of objective purport, etc. All such versions agree that Hegel’s project aims to extend Kant’s positive project from the Transcendental Analytic. It is a mistake to object that this Kantian approach precludes recognition of Hegel as metaphysician, or limits Hegel to subjective idealism. The Kantian approach can allow Hegel to pursue metaphysics, so long as metaphysics itself is understood through the lens of issues descended from Kant’s Analytic being basic. And one might argue that Hegel seeks, by accounting for the conditions of the possibility of cognition, to account for objects of cognition themselves, and even to eliminate any Kantian worries about any unknowability of objects in themselves; one might argue that this is a kind of metaphysics.[49] 

But while I see how one might get a metaphysics in this way, it doesn’t seem to me to be the metaphysics of the end of the Logic. Consideration of the possibility of cognition of any object might get you a metaphysics of what is common to all objects. Or it might get you a metaphysical priority of one side of a dualism over the other: of the judging subject over the objects of its judgments.[50] But I don’t see how it could get you Hegel’s tight focus on a metaphysics of reason, so clearly suggested by borrowing the crucial terminology here—“the idea”, “reason”, etc.—specifically from Kant’s Dialectic. And I don’t see how it could get you Hegel’s complex development of multiple steps of metaphysical priority of reasons in the world. For example, Hegel’s point about the inner purposiveness of life is not that every object is alive in the full sense, nor that this is necessary condition of the possibility of judgment about any object. The metaphysical priority of teleological to non-teleological forms of reason in the world is crucial. Nor is the point that anything with inner purposiveness would engage in acts of judgment or cognition in the full sense. A metaphysical priority of the absolute idea over the idea generally is also crucial. Perhaps the Kantian deduction approach, if focusing specifically on the end of the Logic, would best argue that any “object-level” metaphysical ambitions here are not “playing any significant role in the position defended”, which is more “metalevel” (Pippin 1989, 247). But the arguments themselves in this stretch of text, I have tried to show, do have such direct metaphysical import—as for example about objects structured by inner purposiveness.

True, Hegel engages even here with epistemological problems, but he does so specifically as these are radically reshaped by his taking the metaphysics of reason as more fundamental; this is why the epistemological issues come to be those raised specifically by Hegel’s metaphysics of explanation—concerning the possibility of intelligibility or understanding, in that sense, rather than anything like relations between acts of cognition or judgment and objects of cognition or judgment. That is why I think it better to place the considerable insights of the Kantian approach in context of the opposite reading of Hegel’s unifying aims. Sticking to the Kantian deduction approach, at this point, would seem to require a transition principle. For example, one might see a basis in a deduction of a priori necessary conditions of intelligibility, and then transition by means of a principle requiring that anything real must be intelligible. But that principle defines the rationalism Kant’s Dialectic rejects; and Hegel follows, taking Kant’s “insight into the necessary conflict” to leave that sort of metaphysics hopeless, a reversion from the “loftier spirit of modern philosophy” (WL 5:38-9/25-6). The modern options would then be either Kant’s restrictions or Hegel’s reconstruction of metaphysics on grounds from Kant’s Dialectic. If the latter works, then it leaves no support for Kant’s attempt to transform metaphysics by placing it on the basis of deductions like those of the Transcendental Analytic. And this is why I think that the real Hegel is in a philosophically stronger position than either any either Kantianized or epistemologized Hegel could be: the real Hegel needs no transition principle from any supposed basis to metaphysics; rather, Logic knocks out other options until concluding that theoretical philosophy should always already be direct engagement with the metaphysics of reason.

Finally, I think that the conclusion of the Logic is philosophically strong enough to suggest the lasting importance of some questions relatively neglected today. First, consider those today who would prefer to pursue a version of Kant’s transformed theoretical philosophy, taking as basic to their projects broadly epistemological issues about the relation of cognition and objects. But why? To judge by Hegel, the attractive option here will not be any claim that metaphysics is a matter of indifference. Kant already sees this as hopeless (Ax). And if metaphysics is not a matter of indifference, then how to justify the broadly Kantian transformation? Hegel shows that no arguments from a broadly epistemological basis; they would presume the authority or fundamentality of epistemology in trying to defend it. So even though Kant’s Dialectic is relatively neglected today, reading Hegel suggests that it is what should be most crucial for Kantians today. Can contemporary Kantians defend the Dialectic argument itself? Or can they replace it with some new way of arguing that metaphysics goes awry from within?

Second, consider those who would still pursue metaphysics today. To judge by Hegel, the attractive option here is not to dismiss all worries about metaphysics as irrelevant because merely epistemological. For Hegel shows that even fans of metaphysics should recognize the importance of very different challenges like those of Kant’s Dialectic. And Hegel’s response suggests an essential question here about metaphysical foundationalism. As contemporary philosophy turns back toward metaphysics, it develops just as Kantians and Hegelians should expect: it begins to focus on metaphysical conditions—like the “grounds” now considered under the heading of “metaphysical grounding”; and then it begins to focus on forms of the unconditioned, ultimate grounds, and new forms of what is now called “metaphysical foundationalism”.[51] The question suggested by the conclusion of Hegel’s Logic is whether metaphysics can defend some form of foundationalism against the problems raised by Kant’s Dialectic and Hegel? Or is it better for metaphysicians to seek, with Hegel, a principled alternative to metaphysical foundationalism?

In any case, the end of Hegel’s Logic shows that his basic aim is to rebuild metaphysics on grounds of the strongest worry about it. Because of this, he can still help us to engage with one another philosophically, even across the chasm separating those who would travel in contrasting philosophical directions. For Hegel offers us a single metaphilosophical framework that can bring into focus at once both powerful worries about metaphysics, and also continuing prospects for its defense. 

 

 

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