Metaphysical Foundations of the History of Philosophy: Hegel's 1820 Introduction to the
"Lectures on the History of Philosophy"
Author(s): Allegra de Laurentiis
Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Sep., 2005), pp. 3-31
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY: HEGEL'S 1820 INTRODUCTION TO THE
LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
ALLEGRA DE LAURENTIIS
Hegel explicates his theory of the history of philosophic thinking
in several introductions to the various cycles of Lectures on the His
tory of Philosophy held in Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin. Only the in
troductions to the first cycle of Heidelberg lectures (1816) and to the
second cycle of Berlin lectures (1820) survive in Hegel's own hand.1
Since the earlier of these is an integral part of the latter, an analysis of
the 1820 Introduction provides a reliable account of Hegel's theory.
Hegel lectures on the history of philosophy mainly as a philoso
pher, not as a historian. "The history of philosophy must itself be
philosophical,"2 he declares in the address delivered ahead of the 1820
Introduction.3 Thus, he is not interested primarily in delivering a
chronicle of philosophic ideas, propositions, claims, arguments, and
counterarguments in the historical order of their formulation. He pre
supposes his audience's general acquaintance with historical facts and
Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, Harriman Hall, State
University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794.
1 The introductions to all other cycles of lectures on the history of phi
losophy survive?some of them in fragmentary form?in students' manu
scripts. The editorial history of the introductions is told in Georg W. F. Hegel,
Werke in zwanzig Baenden (hereafter,"W), ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl
M. Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969-79), 20:520.
2 "Die Geschichte der Philosophie muss selbst philosophisch seyn";
Georg W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungsmanuskripte II (1816-1831). Gesammelte
Werke (hereafter, "GW'), vol. 18, ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Meiner,
1995), 18:39.
3 The textual basis for my analysis is the critical edition cited above (n.
2). The translations are my own, but I consult throughout the Haldane/
Simson 1892-96 edition (Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson [New York: The Humani
ties Press, 1974]) and the Knox/Miller 1985 translation of the Heidelberg and
Berlin introductions (G. W.F. Hegel. Introduction to the Lectures on the His
tory of Philosophy, trans. Thomas M. Knox and Arnold V. Miller [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1985]).
The Review of Metaphysics 59 (September 2005): 3-31. Copyright ? 2005 by The Review of
Metaphysics
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4 ALLEGRA DE LAURENTIIS
events pertaining to philosophic theories, as well as with major think
ers' general tenets. Hegel is rather concerned with showing, first, why
these tenets were relevant and enjoyed recognition in their time; sec
ond, how and why they were subsequently transformed; and third,
how a core meaning may be discerned in them throughout their trans
formations.
A paradigmatic illustration of Hegel's procedure in interpreting
fundamental principles of the philosophic tradition is provided by the
following comment on "being person" in a Remark to his treatment of
"property" in the 1821 Philosophy of Right
The notion that what spirit is according to its concept or in itself it
should be also in its Dasein and for-itself (thereby that it be person ca
pable of property, having ethicality [and] religion)?this idea is itself
spirit's concept (as causa sui, i.e. as free causation, spirit is such cuius
natura nonpotest concipi nisi existens; Spinoza, Ethics I, Def. 1.) Pre
cisely in this concept. . . there lies the possibility of the opposition be
tween what spirit is merely in itself and its being also for itself. . . and
thus the possibility of the alienation of personhood.4
In other words: the late modern conception of personhood as subjec
tivity with rights (to property, to moral convictions, beliefs, and so
forth) is explained by Hegel as realization of the core meaning of
Spinoza's "god" (or, as in other passages, of Descartes's res cogitans,
equally inconceivable unless as existent). The core meaning of
"spirit" since its inception as nous is the idea of a being that deter
mines itself into being what it is?one important expression of which
is, for example, modern political philosophy's notion of an autono
mous, self-determining subject.
4 "Dass das, was der Geist seinem Begriffe nach oder an sich ist, auch
im Dasein und fuer sich sei (somit Person, des Eigentums faehig sei, Sittlich
keit, Religion habe)?diese Idee ist selbst sein Begriff (als causa sui, d.i. als
freie Ursache, ist er solches, cuius natura non potest concipi nisi existens;
Spinoza, Ethik I, Def. I). In eben diesem Begriffe . . . liegt die Moeglichkeit
des Gegensatzes zwischen dem, was er nur an sich und nicht auch fuer sich
ist. . . und hierin die Moeglichkeit der Entaeusserung der Persoenlichkeif)
Georg W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht
und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, 1821, ?66, Remark. (In the follow
ing, this work is cited as "W 7," followed by page or section number.) The
translations are mine but I consult throughout Thomas M. Knox, HegeVs Phi
losophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), and Hugh B. Nis
bet, Hegel. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 5
The first of the goals outlined in the address and Introduction to
these Lectures (see above) implies a serious attempt to grasp and to
convey the sense in which philosophic concepts and arguments are
meant and understood at their inception. This is where the philologi
cal and historiographie skill of the historian of philosophy has its
rightful and necessary place. The second and third goals presuppose a
theory of philosophy as a particular kind of thinking with specific logi
cal and epistemological features. Here is where the philosopher must
deliver an interpretation of historically documented theories and their
principles that includes but also goes beyond the meaning ostensibly
intended by each of them.
The philosopher lecturing on the history of philosophy has, then,
two sets of criteria guiding the exposition: the theoretical order of
philosophic concepts (dictated by the analysis of their meanings,
which is for Hegel a logical and metaphysical task at once) and the
chronological order of their expression in the history of philosophic
systems. These two sets of criteria do not operate independently of
one another. Hegel's explicit claim is actually stronger than this. The
two orders of reconstruction of the history of philosophic thought are
in principle the same: "According to this idea I now maintain that the
succession of the systems of philosophy in history is the same as the
succession in the logical derivation of the conceptual determinations
of the Idea."5
As the logical sequence cannot be random, so the historical se
quence is not accidental. Just as little can the reconstruction of these
sequences in a history of philosophy (as a discipline) be arbitrary. In
deed, only the most superficial observer would think of philosophers'
choices of themes and methods as a random series. To the contrary,
as if engaging in an epoch-transcending conversation, philosophers in
variably relate to, criticize, or make use of preceding ethical and
5 "Nach dieser Idee behaupte ich nun, dass die Aufeinanderfolge der Sys
teme der Philosophie in der Geschichte dieselbe ist, als die Aufeinanderfolge
in der logischen Ableitung der Begriffsbestimmungen der Idee" (GW 18:49).
See also Georg W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. Die Lehre vom Sein
(1832) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990), where, regarding Parmenides, Hegel writes:
"What is first in the science must have shown itself as the historically first.
And we have to regard the Eleatic One or Being as the first in the knowing of
thought" (GW 21:76). In the following, the translations are mine but I consult
throughout Arnold V. Miller, HegeVs Science of Logic (New York: Humanities
Press, 1969).
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6 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
cognitive concerns. Where no philosophic precedents are given, as in
the case of the Presocratics, philosophers refer to concepts implicit in
the representational thinking (vorstellendes Denken), in the language,
mythology, religion, poetry, and wisdom that have preceded and still
surround them. Even the most skeptical eye perceives philosophic
theories in their historical succession as engaged in some sort of
sense-making. Hegel's Lectures follow the logic of this sense-making
as their thread of Ariadnes through the history of philosophy.
While neither an exhaustive account nor a thorough justification
can be given here of Hegel's strong claim on the logical and historical
orders of philosophic thought, this brief study aims at clarifying the
claim, elucidating two supporting theories from the body of Hegel's
system, and correcting a pertinacious view on Hegel's understanding
of the nature of philosophy.
According to Hegel, the primary (that is, both first and fundamen
tal) subject matter of philosophy is human thinking itself. The history
of philosophy is thus a gradual fulfillment of the Socratic command:
know thyself. Thought's simultaneous double role as subject and sub
ject-matter in philosophy lends the latter the character of a peculiarly
"speculative" enterprise, much in the sense adumbrated in Aristotle's
investigation of the soul: "The mind itself is included among the ob
jects which can be thought. For where the objects are immaterial that
which thinks and that which is thought are identical. Speculative
knowledge and its object are identical."6 In the same Aristotelian
spirit, Hegel explains the dynamics of philosophic thinking as pro
gressive actualization (a becoming fuer sich) of what thinking is po
tentially (according to its concept [dem Begriffe nach] or an sich).
This is the background for his claim that there is not only chronologi
cal but also, and more fundamentally, logical continuity among philo
sophic principles in the course of their history. Thus, it is possible for
him to identify a common (and evolving) meaning in notions that ap
parently refer to vastly different objects of reflection. The introduc
tory chapter to the Doctrine of Being in the Greater Logic is dedicated
to justifying precisely this claim: "Thus the beginning of philosophy is
the foundation that is present and self-preserving in all subsequent de
6 Aristotle, De Anima, ed. and trans. R. D. Hicks (New York:
Prometheus Books, 1991), 3.4.430a5. Hick's translation of he episteme he
theoretike with "speculative knowledge" is fully justified in this context.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 7
velopments, that which remains immanent in all its further determina
tions."7
The thesis that the history of philosophic systems is the expres
sion of a process of human thinking toward absolute self-knowing
(and thus also self-determining) is strong enough to merit an isolated
treatment. Its attempted justification has to be sought in the Greater
Logic8 and not in the History of Philosophy. In section 1 below I treat
Hegel's claim that an in-depth knowledge of the history of philosophy
is an integral part of philosophizing as such, and I elucidate the argu
ments by which he defends this claim. The interpretation of the 1820
Introduction contained in this part highlights important aspects of
Hegel's perspective that, although aimed at grounding the controver
sial metaphysical thesis of the inner unity of thought's logic and his
tory, can by themselves offer a much needed antidote to contempo
rary notions of the history of philosophy as a discipline having merely
instrumental value for doing philosophy proper?as if the latter were
a fundamentally nonhistorical discipline. Section 2 provides then sup
port for Hegel's thesis from the perspective of the internal coherence
of his system. In the conclusion (3) I briefly respond, in the light of
the theory expounded in the 1820 text, to what I take to be an influen
tial misconception of Hegel's understanding of the relation of philoso
phy to Zeitgeist.
I
The History of Philosophy Is Philosophy. The 1820 Introduction
begins by highlighting the continuity of, and marking the distinction
between, the natural and the spiritual grounds of human life and think
ing. While nature remains fastened to unchanging laws throughout its
metamorphoses, spirit, though necessarily anchored in habit-forming
tradition, is capable of transforming the "principles, prejudices and ...
7 "So ist der Anfang der Philosophie, die in allen folgenden Entwicklun
gen gegenwaertige und sich erhaltende Grundlage, das seinen weitern Be
stimmungen durchaus immanent Bleibende" (GW 21:58).
8 Especially in the preliminary essay, "With what must the science be
gin?", and in the actual treatment of the historical instantiations of the transi
tions from each category to the next.
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8 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
riches"9 constituting that tradition. The productions of each genera
tion are both form and matter of the next: they are "its soul, spiritual
substance . . . but also . . . the material present to it."10 Thus, in the
history of our "second nature" the matter being transformed and the
activity producing the transformation do not differ in substance. One
epoch's spirit is made up of that of all previous epochs and transforms
the latter by assimilation into something new, namely itself. This is
why to read history is for us not to read a story of extraneous events
but our own story. As for the history of philosophy, it does not tell a
tale of strange and alien thoughts but rather the story of our own
thinking in one peculiar mode. The development of this thinking
mode is articulated in a multiplicity of forms?the philosophic sys
tems.
Accordingly, a history of philosophy is not a history of opinions,
not even of opinions about topics of general interest such as god, jus
tice, or human nature. When studying the history of philosophy we
are being confronted with concepts that are not just convictions of
groups or individuals but rather principles of theories. What makes a
concept be a mere opinion is the fact of its intrinsic particularity or
perhaps even singularity.11 There are, of course, in the body of every
philosophic work innumerable concepts that represent merely partic
ular or singular convictions. But not just any concept featured in a
philosophic theory is for this reason alone a philosophic concept.
This is rather a notion that functions as theoretical principle: the
whole theory (as a system) depends upon its meaning and consis
tency. Such a principle is the kind of system-identifying concept
Hegel refers to as Grundbegriff.
The singularity or particularity of thoughts embodying mere opin
ion affects both their form and their content. As long as my (or my
community's) ideas about divinity, morality, or right are merely my
(or our) opinions, their referents are merely my (or our) gods, cus
toms, or sense of justice. As such, these thoughts are of no philo
sophic import?except as cultural, psychological, or historical begin
nings of properly philosophic concepts. What enables such thoughts
9"Grundsaetze, Vorurtheile und ... Reichthum" (GW 18:37).
10 "deren Seele, geistige Substanz, . . . aber zugleich . . . ein vorliegender
Stoff fuer sie" (GW 18:37).
11 Compare GW 18:42.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 9
to develop into philosophic concepts, on the other hand, is the fact of
their intrinsic universality.12 The thoughts of divinity, justice, or per
sonhood, in their many mythological, aesthetic, religious, or theologi
cal guises, have potentially universal content. Their objective mean
ing is inextricable from the connotation of universality. "God" is not
divine if he presides over Athens alone; "justice" is not just if it admits
of exceptions; and, by virtue of its intension alone, the concept of
"personhood" cannot extend to some but not other persons. These
concepts are implicitly universal from the moment of their inception,
but it is only in the course of history that they do become explicitly so.
As for the truth content of universal concepts, Hegel reminds his
audience that philosophic theories' differences and mutual contradic
tions do not prove that philosophic truth is relative or, what is the
same, that there is no truth in philosophy.13 Skeptic or relativistic
truth abstinence, Hegel comments, only stimulates thought's hunger
for truth.14 At first, the variance and disagreement among parts of a
cognitive undertaking each equally claiming to provide us with truth
seem to contradict our legitimate rational expectations. Upon reflec
tion, however, it becomes clear that we can only notice, compare, and
grasp theories' differences against a common ground. This ground is
the "instinct" that drives thought to find truth: "The truth however is
one,?the instinct of reason possesses this invincible feeling or belief.
... Already the instinct of thinking pursues [the idea]... that the truth
is one."15 To engage in thinking without an instinctive belief in the
possibility of truth would be akin to engaging in eating without belief
in the possibility of satiety.
The subject matter ubiquitous in philosophy is neither individual
witticisms nor particular cultural beliefs, but rather the concept of
what is true. The history of philosophy consists of a meaningful series
of formulations of this concept. Akin to the Phenomenology's descrip
tion of the path of consciousness, the Lectures on the History of
12 Compare GW 18:43.
13 This observation applies of course equally to the history of the posi
tive sciences.
14 Compare Gif 18:43.
15 uDie Wahrheit aber ist Eine,?dieses un?berwindliche Gefuehl oder
Glauben hat der Instinct der Vernunft. . .?dass die Wahrheit nur eine ist. . .
darin folgt schon der Instinct des Denkens" (GW 18:43 and 45).
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10 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
Philosophy describe the continuous process of self-differentiations of
one thinking activity. As the Phenomenology presents self-conscious
reason's reconstruction of its development out of its own natural
stages, so do these lectures present philosophic thinking as inces
santly retracing its own history in the endeavor to grasp itself.
To say that conceptual thinking is philosophy's medium and sub
ject matter is not to say that philosophy is a science of abstractions.
Philosophic thinking does not consist only of a formal determination
of concepts and their relations?that is, it is not reducible to formal
logic, linguistics, or mathematics. It consists, rather, of the analysis
and determination of the meaning of system-identifying concepts.
The content of a concept that functions as principle in a system is not
exhausted by its relations to sub- or superordinate concepts. As al
ready mentioned, not just any concept that arises in a philosophic the
ory is for Hegel a philosophic concept in the technical sense. Grund
begriffe are concepts whose meaning, internal consistency, and
mutual compatibility provide the grounds of justification of the theory
they are embedded in. A system-identifying concept, for example
Plato's "idea" or Leibniz's "monad," is a unity of other concepts differ
ing from it and among themselves. In virtue of its being an internally
differentiated unity, this "concrete concept" contains not the common
but rather the differentiating features of the notions it encompasses.
At this point,16 Hegel illustrates the distinction between abstract and
concrete concepts through that between abstract and concrete sensi
ble representations (sinnliche Vorstellungen]). The sensible repre
sentation of "red" is abstract because it is an abstraction from many
representations. The sensible representation of "rose," on the other
hand, is more concrete, because it is also a unity of many representa
tions (life, shape, color, smell, and so forth), that is, it is "One Subject,
One Idea."17
Contrary to the familiar rule holding for concepts as classes, ac
cording to which a concept's increasing extension always implies its
decreasing intension, the more general a system-identifying principle
is, the more determinations it contains: "Here the most extensive is
16 GW 18:46.
17 Ibid.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 11
also the most intensive."18 This is why Hegel refers to philosophy as
the most concrete of sciences and why he maintains that common
sense and even enlightened ratiocination are insufficient by them
selves to account for philosophic principles and what derives from
them:
It is in this that knowledge of reason distinguishes itself from knowl
edge of the understanding, and it is the business of philosophizing to
show against the understanding that the true, the Idea does not consist
of empty generalities, but of a universal that in itself is the particular,
the determinate.19
This definition of the Idea (or "the true") as concrete universal
containing particularity or determinacy is an abbreviated form of the
definition of "the Concept as such" (der Begriff) from the Logic:20
The Concept as such contains the moment o? universality, as free equal
ity with itself in its determinacy; it contains the moment of particular
ity, or of the determinacy in which the Universal remains serenely equal
to itself, and it contains the moment of singularity, as the inward reflec
tion of the determinacies of universality and particularity. This singular
negative unity with itself is what is in and for itself determined, and at
the same time identical with itself or universal.21
The notion of a universality that by self-particularization posits itself
as a (universal) singularity is elucidated by Hegel in the sections of the
18 "Hier ist das Extensivste auch das Intensivste" (GW 18:47-8).
19 "Es ist hierin dass sich die Vernunfterkenntnis von der blossen Ver
standeserkenntnis unterscheidet, und es ist das Geschaeft des Philosophi
rens gegen den Verstand zu zeigen, dass das Wahre, die Idee nicht in leeren
Allgemeinheiten besteht, sondern in einem Allgemeinen, das in sich selbst
das Besondere, das Bestimmte ist" (GW 18:45).
201 use (with few exceptions noted explicitly) the following translation
of the Encyclopaedia Logic: G. W. F. Hegel. The Encyclopaedia Logic (with
the Zusaetze), ed. and trans. Theodore F. Geraets, Wallis A. Suchting, and
Henry S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991). The textual basis of my analy
sis of the main text is GW, vol. 20 and, for the Remarks and Additions, W, vol.
8. The Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1830) is cited in the follow
ing as "2?," followed by section number.
21 "Der Begriff als solcher enthaelt die Momente der Allgemeinheit, als
freier Gleichheit mit sich selbst in ihrer Bestimmtheit?der Besonderheit, der
Bestimmtheit, in welcher das Allgemeine ungetruebt sich selbst gleich bleibt,
und der Einzelnheit, als der Reflexion in sich der Bestimmtheiten der Allge
meinheit und Besonderheit, welche negative Einheit mit sich das an und fuer
sich Bestimmte und zugleich mit sich Identische oder Allgemeine ist" (E,
?163).
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12 ALLEGRA DE LAURENTIIS
Doctrine of the Concept that follow this passage. In the 1820 Intro
duction, however, he merely comments that this notion cannot be
grasped by understanding alone, but requires reason (Vernunft).
Reason grasps a particular kind of concepts that can be charac
terized, in a first and general way, as sharing the mark of self-referen
tiality. Both this kind of notion and the kind of thinking that makes
such notions intelligible?namely reason?may thus be called "specu
lative." One such notion, for example, is "self-consciousness." As ex
plained in the chapter of the Phenomenology bearing this name,22
"self-consciousness" refers to mind's taking on the contradictory (and
thus also self-negating) role of being subject and object of one and the
same act of cognition, simultaneously and in the same respect:
If we call the movement of knowing, concept, but knowing as motion
less unity, or the Ego, the object, then we see that not only for us, but for
knowing itself, the object corresponds to the concept.?Or alterna
tively, by calling what the object is in itself, the concept, while [calling]
the object what it is as object or for an other, it becomes clear that the
being-in-itself and the being-for-another is the same.23
Self-consciousness is a concept that the understanding cannot ana
lyze because it involves the sublation, and thus the inclusion, of a con
tradiction. It is a speculative concept arrived at and grasped only by
speculative reason.24
22 The translations of the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit are my own.
The textual basis is GW, vol. 9. I have consulted throughout Miller's HegeVs
Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
23 "Nennen wir Begriff, die Bewegung des Wissens, den Gegenstand
aber, das Wissen als ruhige Einheit, oder als Ich, so sehen wir, dass nicht nur
fuer uns, sondern fuer das Wissen selbst, der Gegenstand dem Begriffe
entspricht. - Oder auf die andere Weise, den Begriff das genannt, was der
Gegenstand ansich ist, den Gegenstand aber das, was er als Gegenstand,
oder fuer ein anderes ist, so erhellt, dass das Ansichseyn, und das fuer ein
anderes seyn dasselbe ist" (GW 9:103).
24 Nonstandard analytic philosophy of logic does share Hegel's views
with regards to the meaningfulness and viability of some contradictions. See
for example the numerous outstanding contributions of Graham Priest on
this subject, such as his In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhof, 1987); the two historical introductions to Para
consistent Logic. Essays on the Inconsistent, ed. Graham Priest, Richard
Routley, and Jean Norman (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1989); and "What's
So Bad about Contradictions?" Journal of Philosophy 95, no. 8 (1998): 410
26.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 13
Thus, Hegel's characterization of the discipline of the history of
philosophy as description of the development of the Idea can be use
fully summarized in the following terms. According to this theory, the
subject matter of this discipline is thinking as articulated in time
through a series of theories (Systeme) centered upon concepts
(Grundbegriffe) that are intrinsically speculative and thus intelligible
only to reason.
The 1820 Introduction continues by highlighting different but
connected features of philosophic thinking, or of the developing Idea:
(1) its "organic" structure (philosophy is an evolving system of sys
tems); (2) its speculative nature (philosophy is self-knowing knowl
edge); and (3) the characteristic dynamics of its movement, namely a
simultaneously outward and inward development. As these are the
features that justify the claim of the intrinsically historical character
of theoretical concepts, we turn to them first. Incursions into the
Greater Logic are made necessary by Hegel's present use of terms
whose technical meaning he has explained previously, namely in the
1812, 1813, and 1816 editions of the three books of the Logic. Since
the spirit's "deeds" on the stage of history (compare Philosophy of
Right, ?343) parallel the processes of consciousness described in the
Phenomenology of Spirit, passages from the latter will be used to il
lustrate Hegel's present argument.
(1) Philosophic thinking is an organic system. In its historical
unfolding philosophy can be likened to a living organism. Philosophic
thinking is one, but it exists only as a dynamic whole of vitally interre
lated parts (theories). It maintains its specific identity throughout its
transformations. It develops through time due to an internal drive.
Physical liveliness . . . like the liveliness of spirit... is an urge, passes
over into the hunger and thirst for truth, presses for knowledge of it, for
the satisfaction of this urge . . . [T]he true has the urge ... to develop it
self. Only the living, the spiritual moves, stirs itself inside itself, self-de
velops. In this way the Idea, concrete in itself and self-developing, is an
organic system, a totality that contains in itself a, wealth of stages and
moments.2^
25 "Die physische Lebendigkeit. . . wie die Lebendigkeit des Geistes . . .
ist Trieb, geht ueber in den Hunger und Durst nach Wahrheit, nach Erkennt
nis derselben, dringt nach Befriedigung dieses Triebs ... [D]as Wahre [hat]
den Trieb . . . sich zu entwickeln. Nur das Lebendige, das Geistige bewegt,
ruehrt sich in sich, entwickelt sich. Die Idee ist so, concret an sich und sich
entwickelnd, ein organisches System, eine Totalitaet welche ein Reichtum
von Stuffen und Momenten in sich enthaelf (GW 18:43 and 47).
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14 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
Like the description of an organism's ontogenesis, the description of
philosophy in history requires a concept of self-movement in which
the connotation of change does not imply that of transition to an
other. Hegel's technical term for organic or self-movement?and the
term he uses in this Introduction to characterize philosophy's his
tory?is "development" (Entwicklung).
Rather than using the term indiscriminately to denote any kind of
process, Hegel confines the use of "development" in the Logic to the
dynamic structure of self-related thinking. He sets it apart from other
dynamic configurations by which thinking relates to the being and to
the essence of things other than thought. In the opening of the Ency
clopaedia's Doctrine of the Concept we read:
The progression of the Concept is no longer either passing-over or shin
ing into an other, but development; for the [moments] that are distin
guished are immediately posited at the same time as identical with one
another and with the whole, and the determinacy is as a free being of
the whole Concept.26
This passage summarizes the three structural features of thinking
whose distinction Hegel considers so fundamental as to constitute the
organizational principle of the entire Logic. The differences in think
ing Being, Essence, and the Concept are functions of the difference in
the relation of each to thinking itself.
When thinking has categories of Being for its generic objects (for
example, indeterminate being, nothing, becoming; determinate being,
its quality, quantity or intrinsic measure, and so forth) its dynamic is
described by Hegel as a "passing over" (Uebergehen) from one to an
other category. In this context, the denotation (the signified) of each
category is seemingly independent of thinking itself and is related to
the next category by a reflection extrinsic to it.
When thinking has categories of the Essence of Being for its ge
neric objects, Hegel prefers to describe its movement as a "shining
into another" (Scheinen in Anderes), that is, a reciprocal reflection
among the meanings of different categories. Each of the categories
26 "Das Fortgehen des Begriffs ist nicht mehr Uebergehen noch Schei
nen in Anderes, sondern Entwicklung, indem das Unterschiedene unmittel
bar zugleich als das Identische mit einander und mit dem Ganzen gesetzt, die
Bestimmtheit als ein freies Seyn des ganzen Begriffes ist" (E, ?161).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 15
involved in this logical sphere constitutes part of the meaning of the
preceding as well as of the following one, though only logical analysis
can detect this reciprocal "shine." For example, the category of iden
tity already contains?upon reflection?the category of distinction
(Unterschied)27 and vice versa. Both, in turn, contain the category of
ground and vice versa: the ground of something's identity is necessar
ily distinguishable from, though also identical with, what is grounded
by it. Equally, the notion of the world as appearance implies a notion
of the world's essence and vice versa. Through both, in turn, "shines"
a notion of the world's actuality that includes both its essence and its
appearance. Each of the categories of essence is meant as referring si
multaneously to a determinacy of Being (Essence is the Essence of
Being) and a determinacy of thought (Essence is also the Concept?or
truth?of Being): the ground of x provides the objective reason for the
existence of x while providing also the concept of what x essentially
or truly is.
It is only when thinking has itself as its explicit object?as in the
system-identifying concepts of philosophic theories: idea, nous, god,
res cogitans, substance, monad, reason, mind?that Hegel refers to its
movement as development. In the 1820 Introduction, in particular, he
makes it explicit that self-referentiality is the differentia specifica of
genuinely philosophic thinking over against all other kinds of thought.
Thus, the logical and chronological movement of philosophic thinking
is correctly identified as self-development:
[T]hat philosophically known truth exists in the element of thought, in
the form of universality,... this is familiar to our common way of think
ing. But [to say] that the universal itself contains its own determination,
... here begins a properly philosophic proposition?here it is, therefore,
that a consciousness that does not yet cognize philosophically with
draws and says that it doesn't understand this.28
27 Two excellent and concise discussions of Hegel's uses of Unterschied
and Differenz in the Logic are in E, pp. xxiii-xxiv, and Michael Inwood, A
Hegel Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 131-3.
28 "[D]ass die philosophisch erkannte Wahrheit im Elemente des Gedan
kens, in der Form der Allgemeinheit ist,... es ist diss unserer gewoehnlichen
Vorstellung gelaeuffig. Aber dass das Allgemeine selbst in sich seine Bestim
mung enthalte, . . . hier faengt ein eigentlich philosophischer Satz an?hier
tritt darum das noch nicht philosophisch erkennende Bewusstseyn zurueck,
und sagt es verstehe diss nicht" (GW 18:45-6).
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16 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
Accordingly, the organic-systematic character of philosophy is a con
sequence of its self-referential nature, that is, of its being speculative.
(2) Philosophic thinking is a speculative organic system. The
reason for philosophy's organic nature is its speculative character.
In a move parallel to that described in the Phenomenology, where
natural consciousness discovers itself in its rebirth as self-conscious
ness ("Ego is the content of the relation [of knowing to object] and the
relating itself')29 philosophic inquiry always already includes the in
vestigation of the agent (that is, thinking itself or "the universal") and
the medium of investigation (that is, concepts or "universals"). In or
der to determine what thinking is, how it affects its objects, whether it
constitutes or distorts them, whether it is adequate to or incongruous
with them, there is no other tribunal to turn to or instrument to use
but thinking itself. Philosophy proper begins with the recognition of a
universal containing its own determination, as defined in the Logic:
"The Concept as such contains the moment of universality, ... of
particularity, . . . and ... of singularity, as the inward reflection of
.. . universality and particularity. This . . . negative unity with itself is
what is in and for itselfdetermined.^0 One fundamental meaning of
"speculative thinking" is that it objectifies what is otherwise (for ex
ample, for ratiocination) merely subjective. To make theoretical and
practical human thinking into an object of logical and historical inves
tigation is to turn thought into an object for thought. This is why both
the historical whole of philosophic theories and the theory of this his
tory merit being characterized as "speculative."
These introductory reflections premised to the Lectures on the
History of Philosophy parallel what Hegel had written in 1807 when
introducing the history of consciousness. Thinking as generic activity
(Denken ueberhaupt) is to conceptual cognition (begreifendes Erken
nen)2,1 as natural consciousness is to self-consciousness. Philosophic
29 "Ich ist der Inhalt der Beziehung, und das Beziehen selbst" (GW
9:103).
30 "Der Begriff als solcher enthaelt die Momente der Allgemeinheit. . . ,
der Besonderheit. . . und der Einzelheit, als der Reflexion-in-sich der... Al
lgemeinheit und Besonderheit, welche negative Einheit mit sich das an und
fuer sich Bestimmte ... ist"(i?, ?163; see above, n. 21).
31 The distinction is also outlined and illustrated by Hegel in ?2 and Re
mark of the 1830 Encyclopedia, GW 20:40-1 and W 8:42-3, respectively.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 17
science, we read in the Introduction to the Phenomenology, is apt to
convey the truth because thinking is neither merely an instrument nor
a medium that modifies or distorts a subject matter alien to it but
rather this subject matter itself. Since any object of philosophic inves
tigation must be conceptual, philosophic thinking always investigates
itself in the investigation of truth.32 Thus, the historical inception of
philosophic thinking coincides with the rise of the self-reflexive stage
of consciousness, namely self-consciousness. As long as conscious
ness has for its object a content which it does not consider to belong
to itself?"beings" that it senses, "things" that it perceives, "forces"
that it understands to exist beyond the things perceived?its history is
part and parcel of the natural history of knowing. The stages of natu
ral consciousness do not yet constitute knowing proper, let alone
philosophic cognition, just as the stages of the natural soul do not yet
constitute spirit proper.
Now, since this exposition has for its object only appearing knowledge,
... it can be taken as the path of natural consciousness making its way
to true knowledge; or as the path of the soul that journeys through a se
ries of its own configurations as stages set for it by its own nature, that it
may purify itself into spirit. . . . Natural consciousness will prove itself
to be only [the] concept of knowing, or nonreal knowing.33
Real or philosophic knowing begins when thinking realizes34 that its
objects are being determined by itself. Knowing the object and self
knowing, then, come together in one act: "Ego is the content of the re
lation, and the relating itself; Ego is itself over against an other, and
32 See GW 9:53-4.
33 "Weil nun diese Darstellung nur das erscheinende Wissen zum Gegen
stande hat, so . . . kann [sie] ... als der Weg des natuerlichen Bewusstseyns,
das zum wahren Wissen dringt, genommen werden; oder als der Weg der
Seele, welche die Reihe ihrer Gestaltungen, als durch ihre Natur ihr vorgest
eckter Stationen durchwandert, dass sie sich zum Geiste laeutere ... Das nat
uerliche Bewusstseyn wird sich erweisen, nur Begriff des Wissens, oder nicht
reales Wissen zu seyn" (GW 9:55-6). Hegel insists that natural consciousness
per se "loses its truth" on the path of philosophy: "Das natuerliche Bewusst
seyn ... verliert auf diesem Wege seine Wahrheit" (GW 9:56).
34 English offers as many speculative insights as German does. The use
of "to realize" for "to become aware of is the perfect psychological counter
part to the speculative meaning of Hegel's "self-actualization of conscious
ness."
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18 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
simultaneously grasps beyond35 this other which for the Ego is like
wise only the Ego itself."36
The phenomenological presentation of knowing as it merely ap
pears,37 namely in relation to what is allegedly other than knowing, is,
then, the negative prelude to "free science moving in the form proper
to it."38 The latter, then, is the proper subject matter of a philosophi
cal history of philosophy: self-investigating and thereby self-determin
ing or "free" thought.
(3) Philosophic thinking is outward and inward development.
The 1820 Introduction also claims that the externalization of philo
sophic thinking in the historical sequence of its systems is at the same
time an inwardization (Insichgehen) or recollection (Erinnerung) of
philosophic consciousness?a deepening of its self-reflexive charac
ter.
Further, this development is not directed [only] outwards as in external
ity, but the developmental unfolding is also a going inwards;... As the
outward going of the philosophical Idea in its development is not... a
becoming other but likewise a going-into-itself, a deepening of itself in
itself, so does the progression render the Idea, previously general and
rather undeterminate, more determinate in itself.39
35 Michael. J. Petry, HegeVs Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (hereafter,
"Subjective Spirif), vols. 1-3 (Boston: Reidel, 1978), uses "to include" to
translate Hegel's uebergreifen in the definition of the Ego in the Philosophy
of Subjective Spirit (E, ?438), where the universality of reason is explained
as the Ego's capacity of being permeated and grasped by the object as well as
the Ego's activity of "grasping beyond" and incorporating the object. In
wood, Dictionary, suggests "to embrace" or "to overreach" (58-9).
36 "Ich ist der Inhalt der Beziehung, und das Beziehen selbst; es ist selbst
gegen ein anderes, und greifft zugleich ueber diss andre ueber, das fuer es
ebenso nur es selbst ist" (GW 9:103).
37 Compare GW 9:55, quoted above: "nur das erscheinende Wissen."
38 "die freye, in ihrer eigenthuemlichen Gestalt sich bewegende Wissen
schaft" (GW 9:55).
39 "Ferner geht diese Entwicklung nicht nach Aussen als in die Aeusser
lichkeit, sondern das Auseinandergehen der Entwicklung ist eben so ein Ge
hen nach Innen; . . . Indem das Hinausgehen der philosophischen Idee in
ihrer Entwicklung nicht... ein Werden zu einem Andern sondern ebenso ein
In-sich-hineingehen, ein sich in [sich] Vertieffen ist, so macht das Fortschre
iten die vorher allgemeine, unbestimmtere Idee in sich bestimmter" (GW
18:47).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 19
If self-referentiality, or the inclusion of thought in the thinking of the
object, is characteristic of philosophy, then the advance of philosophy
in time will also follow, in conformity with the Socratic command is
sued at the beginning of its history, an inward trajectory: advancing
philosophic knowledge will imply increased cognition of the knowing
self.
It is true, of course, not only of philosophy but of other forms of
spirit as well that their movement is always more than objectification
in an "other," be this the spiritual or the material products of our spe
cies's second nature. Their development is as well a recollection
(Erinnerung), whereby spirit enhances its grasp and determination of
itself precisely through its self-externalization.40 By apparently be
coming other, spirit attains an ever more concrete shape of itself. As
in the Phenomenology self-experience is said to lead the soul to self
knowledge (the soul "achieves cognition of what it is in itself through
the complete experience of itself'),41 so in the Philosophy of Spirit,
spirit's experience of its own externalizations leads to its increasing
self-knowledge. And since spirit consists of human thought's develop
ment in self-knowing, increased self-knowledge means also increased
inner determination (and "concretion") of the very nature of spirit.
This, again, may be illustrated by recourse to the Anthropology of the
soul. In the development of spirit from natural soul to consciousness
proper, every stage in the externalization of the soul?its taking pos
session of corporeality, its positing and taking possession of the exter
nal world, and so on?also represents a phase of spirit's inwardiza
tion, that is, the progressive transformation of its in-itself into for
itself, or of its corporeity into subjectivity. Both sides of the soul's de
velopment, externalization and inwardization, are ideologically di
rected toward the full sublation of soul into conscious selfness or
Egoity:
40 For a detailed overview of the role of Erinnerung in the general econ
omy of the logic and psychology of thinking in Hegel see Angelica Nuzzo,
"Thinking and Recollecting. Logic and Psychology in Hegel's Philosophy,"
forthcoming in La memoria, ed. Gianna Gigliotti (Naples: Bibliopolis/Vrin,
2005).
41 "durch die vollstaendige Erfahrung ihrer selbst zur Kenntnis desjeni
gen gelangt, was sie an sich selbst ist" (GW 9:55).
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20 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
In itself, matter has no truth within the soul; as being-for-itself, the soul
separates itself from its immediate being, and sets the latter over
against itself as corporeity.... The soul that has posited42 its being over
against itself, that has sublated and determined it as its own, has lost the
meaning of soul as immediacy of the spirit. The actual soul... is in-it
self the ideality for-itself of its determinacies; in its externality [it is]
recollected in and infinitely related to itself.43
Only a philosophical history of philosophy can capture the inwardiz
ing or recollective dimension of spirit's external development, namely
by reconstructing the successive sublations of philosophic principles
in the history of the systems. The logical concretization, that is, in
creasing intension and extension,44 of philosophic concepts is then
the necessary complement to their chronological succession. The
principles of ancient philosophies are comparatively more "abstract"
and their signification more "external" than later ones, but they are in
cluded or recollected in these: "Philosophy is, now, for itself the
knowing of this development and, as conceptual thinking, is itself this
thinking development. The further this development has thriven, the
more complete philosophy is."45
The history of philosophy is not Historie, a story told from a per
spective external to philosophy or a report on real occurrences as op
42 Petry, Subjective Spirit, translates "Soul which posits its being over
against itself," but Hegel uses the verb in the past tense: entgegengesetzt hat.
Indeed, the soul's process of positing its own content as an other from itself
must be concluded for it to cease to be mere soul and to begin its journey as
consciousness. The logic underlying this process is explained in the Greater
Logic, Doctrine of Being, chap. l.C: the truth resulting from the analysis of
undetermined being and undetermined nothing (namely that they are becom
ing) is not just that being and nothing are permanently passing into each
other, but that they have always already done so (GW 21:69).
43 "An sich hat die Materie keine Wahrheit in der Seele; als fuersichsey
ende scheidet diese sich von ihrem unmittelbaren Seyn, und stellt sich das
selbe als Leiblichkeit gegenueber.... Die Seele, die ihr Seyn sich entgegeng
esetzt, es aufgehoben und als das ihrige bestimmt hat, hat die Bedeutung der
Seele, der Unmittelbarkeit des Geistes, verloren. Die wirkliche Seele ... ist
an sich die fuer sich seyende Idealitaet ihrer Bestimmtheiten, in ihrer Aeus
serlichkeit erinnert in sich und unendliche Beziehung auf sich" (E, ?412).
44 See above, n. 18.
45 "Die Philosophie ist nun fuer sich das Erkennen dieser Entwicklung,
und ist als begreiffendes Denken selbst diese denkende Entwicklung. Je
weiter diese Entwicklung gediehen, desto vollkommner ist die Philosophie"
(GW 18:47).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 21
posed to a fable about unreal ones. The history of philosophy is Ge
schichte, the developmental history without which what has
developed cannot be made intelligible.46 For example, a philosophic
investigation of mind ignoring all that "mind" has meant since Anaxag
oras resembles the efforts of psychologists attempting to grasp their
patients' personalities without knowledge of their personal history.47
Mind per se does not name a thing but a concept. In theorizing "mind"
one cannot indicate any signified thing to which the term corresponds
46 Geschichte derives from geschehen, whose core meaning in its Old
High German form (scehanto) is "to turn [out] suddenly." Over time, the lat
ter acquired the connotation of the unexpected, new event (Ereignis) and fi
nally that of Werden, becoming in general.
47 For such an ahistorical approach see John R. Searle's The Mystery of
Consciousness (New York: New York Review of Books, 1997). In the intro
duction, "errors" and "obsolete categories" of the "religious and philosophical
tradition" are said to "plague" contemporary mind theory (p. xii). But
Searle's own thesis?"consciousness is a natural, biological phenomenon. It
is as much part of our biological life as digestion, growth, or photosynthesis"
(p. xiii)?hardly differs from those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
thinkers like de la Mettrie, Cabanis, C Vogt, or Du Bois-Reymond. This pecu
liar a-historicity is reproduced in Daniel Dennett's study of "the mind (or
brain)" (The Intentional Stance [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997], 123). De
spite assurances that his investigations into "mind" are philosophical, Den
nett's sparse references to mind theories in Western philosophy are oddly se
lective. In The Mind's I (with Douglas R. Hofstadter) (New York: Bantam,
1982), he leaps from a sketch of Locke's conception of conscious mind as
"transparent to itself to Freud as discoverer of "the existence of uncon
scious mental processes" (ibid., 11-2). No reference is made to Leibniz's re
buttal of Locke, his theory of petites perceptions (New Essays on Human
Understanding), of life-degrees in the monad (Monadology), or of the differ
ence of "perception" from "apperception" (Principles of Nature and Grace)-,
to apperception's central role in Kant's theory of mind; to Hegel's distinction
between conscious and unconscious thinking (E, ?398) and implicit and ex
plicit soul content (E, ??402-3); or to Freud's extensive debt to Nietzsche on
this subject. Thus, there are certainly more "somewhat distinct ancestries
worth noting" (Consciousness Explained, 44) than Dennett suspects. Tho
mas Nagel (Other Minds [New York: Oxford University Press, 1995], 7) offers
an interesting explanation for this philosophizing. He claims, "philosophers
don't have to know much about history or anything about literature, but they
are expected ... to have at least an amateur's grasp of the contributions of
Newton, Maxwell, Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg, Cantor, Goedel, and Turing.
. . all of which provide data for philosophical reflection." One cannot help
wondering why a (prefereably nonamateurish) grasp of Plato, Aristotle,
Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, or Hegel is not seen as providing at least as good
"data" for doing philosophy.
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22 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
other than the concept of mind itself. "Mind" signifies "the concept of
mind" and this, as all concepts, has a history. The contemporary
meaning of "mind" must thus be codetermined by the meanings it has
embodied in the history of philosophy. An adequate contemporary
concept of mind will have to overcome and include (sub?ate) all previ
ous ones. In announcing that "the STUDY of the history of philoso
phy is study of philosophy itself,?as cannot be otherwise,"48 Hegel
prepares his audience for the radical idea that a philosophical history
of philosophy is a chronological recapitulation of the intrinsic logic of
philosophic thinking.
II
The History of Philosophy Parallels the Logic of the Idea. It is
probably not extravagant to maintain that Hegel's thesis (quoted in
the opening section but to be repeated here) lies at the foundation of
his entire philosophy as system: "According to this idea, I now main
tain that the succession of the systems of philosophy in history is the
same as the succession in the logical derivation of the conceptual de
terminations of the Idea."49
The thesis can be paraphrased as stating that the historical suc
cession of systems in the history of philosophy parallels (to use a
weak version of the claim) or coincides with (to use Hegel's strong
version) the logical succession of spirit's phases in its practical and
theoretical activity of knowing itself.50 The sequential whole of theo
ries (die Aufeinanderfolge der Systeme) displays phases that corre
spond to internal principles of human thinking and acting (Begriffs
bestimmungen der Idee), and the sequence of the phases is dictated
by the necessity intrinsic to the logic of these principles. Since the
systems in the history of philosophy are different expressions of one
thinking process, Hegel claims further that their principles, though
necessarily known (erkannt) only through historically documented
48 "das STUDIUM der Geschichte der Philosophie [ist] Studium der Phi
losophie selbst,?wie es denn nicht anders seyn kann" (GW 18:50).
49GW 18:49. Seen. 5.
50 See GW 18:52.
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 23
theories, can only be adequately grasped (begriffen) as determina
tions of the Idea, determinations whose logical connection is ex
pounded in the Logic:
I maintain that if one strips the fundamental concepts [Grundbegriffe]
of the systems that have appeared in the history of philosophy of what
concerns their exterior shape, their application to the particular, and
similar features, then one obtains the various stages of determination of
the Idea itself in its logical concept.51
Put in a somewhat different way: the philosopher reconstructing the
history of philosophy understands the theories succeeding each other
in time to be expressions (or real appearances: Erscheinungen)52 of
principles of the theoretical and practical activity of self-knowing
called "the Idea."53
In the text under discussion Hegel does not develop an explicit
argument for the idea that the history and logic of philosophic think
ing correspond to each other?let alone for the stronger version pur
porting that they are "the same." In support of his thesis he merely re
fers us here to the metaphysics of time from his Philosophy of
Nature.54
After a brief treatment of the philosophy of time being invoked
here as explanatory of this thesis (1), we shall turn to a related but dif
ferent doctrine of Hegel's that provides additional (though far from
definitive) support for it (2). This is the theory of the parallel and
seemingly inverse directions of the ontological and logical develop
ments of "knowing substance" (wissende Substanz) into its
51 "Ich behaupte, dass wenn man die Grundbegriffe der in der Ge
schichte der Philosophie erschienenen Systeme rein dessen entkleidet, was
ihre aeusserliche Gestaltung, ihre Anwendung auf das Besondere, und dergle
ichen betrift, so erhaelt man die verschiedenen Stuffen der Bestimmung der
Idee selbst in ihrem logischen Begriffe" (GW 18:49-50). For an exhausting
explication and critical assessment of Hegel's thesis and its metaphysical pre
suppositions see Klaus Duesing, Hegel und die Geschichte der Philosophie.
Ontologie und Dialektik in Antike und Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftli
che Buchgesellschaft, 1983).
52 GW 18:51.
53 On margin of this passage in the manuscript Hegel notes: "only be
cause of this do I bother to deal with it, to lecture on it [nur darum gebe ich
mich damit ab, halte Vorlesungen darueber]" (GW 18:51), that is, on the his
tory of philosophy.
54E, ??254-9.
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24 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
conceptual form (Begriffsgestalt), that is, into self-knowing substance
or subjectivity proper. This theory is found in the section on Absolute
Knowing of the 1807 Phenomenology.55
(1) By referring to the time metaphysics from the Philosophy of
Nature, Hegel is reminding his audience of the theory that nature and
spirit are both forms of the self-external being (Aussersichsein) of the
Idea. This self-externality, common to the existence of nature and
spirit, consists of their spatiality and temporality. In the section on
Mechanics, for example, space and time are defined as derivations
from a more fundamental determination of nature, namely pure exter
nality (Aeusserlichkeit). Space is nature's externality in-itself, thus it
is called immediate externality;56 time is nature's externality for-itself,
thus it is called mediated externality.57
The same conception underlies the exposition of the spatial and
temporal dimensions of the "natural soul"58 in the Philosophy of Sub
jective Spirit. Spirit as natural soul is described at first in its spatial
existence, that is, as a multiplicity of geographic, ethnic, familial, and
individual traits and temperaments characterized by the inertia and
reciprocal indifference typical of all natural things regarded as phe
nomena in space. These are the "places" of spirit's first self-external
ization, or the soul's natural qualities as they coexist on earth.59 The
second dimension of the natural soul is temporal: the stages of life, re
production, and the individual soul's oscillations between the sleep
ing and the waking state. These are the "epochs" of spirit's first shape
as soul. Each of these is a way in which the soul undergoes natural
changes. They lend human and other animal life its character as a
continuum of differentiations.60 This distinction of spatial (or imme
diate) and temporal (or mediated) forms of the natural soul is, of
course, purely analytical. What there is, in all places and at all times,
is their unity, that is, the mediated immediacy of the living body.61 It is
55 GW 9:428.
56 Compare ?, ??254-6.
57 Compare ?",??257-9.
58?, ??391^02.
59 Compare ?',??392-5.
60 Compare ?*, ??396-8.
61 On the logical identity of "soul" and "living body" in Hegel see Michael
Wolff, Das Koerper-Seele Problem. Kommentar zu Hegel, Enzyklopaedie
(1830), ? 389 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1992).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 25
precisely the dynamic unity of qualities and changes in and of the soul
that explains how this phenomenon of nature can eventually distin
guish itself from its own corporeality and acquire inwardness. Soul is
the stage at which nature begins to lose its one-sided extrinsicality. It
is the first turning point in the actualization of the concept of corpo
real nature: "Spirit is the existent truth of matter, [namely] that matter
itself has no truth."62 Thus soul, the first concrete unity of spirit, con
sists of the simultaneous perception of diverse qualities (sensations)
and the continuous experience (as Erlebnis) of a variety of changes.
The soul that senses or finds in itself (empfindet) one totality of sen
sations is the feeling soul (die fuehlende Seele).63 Merely feeling soul
will eventually, through the repetition of sensations or habitual sen
tience,64 turn into actual soul, the precursor of consciousness: "The
ego is the lightning that strikes through the natural soul and con
sumes its naturalness."65 These primitive features of the existence of
spirit in its most natural mode carry over into all its subsequent
shapes. Spirit exists and acts always and exclusively in the external
dimensions of space and time.
The 1820 Introduction to the History of Philosophy stresses the
role of space and time as particular representations (Vorstellungen) of
self-reflective thinking. As all activity, thinking exists only in its exter
nalization: only what is actual (wirklich or wirkend, that is, having ef
fects) exists. Philosophic thinking is no exception: it only exists
through its actualizations.66 If time and space are dimensions of ex
trinsicality in general and if thinking exists only in extrinsic forms,
then time and space are constitutive of thinking as much as of nature,
of the natural soul, and of all other determinations of the Idea. This,
Hegel clarifies, applies to individual consciousness as much as to
spirit in general and its absolute expressions, that is, art, religion, and
philosophy. The time-space of individual consciousness is individual
62 "Der Geist ist die existierende Wahrheit der Materie, dass die Materie
selbst keine Wahrheit hat" (E, ?389 Remark).
63Compared, ??399-403.
64Habituation is described in ??409-10.
65 "Das Ich ist der durch die Naturseele schlagende und ihre Natuerlich
keit verzehrende Blitz" (E, ?412 Addition).
66 Compare GW 18:52.
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26 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
life; the time-space of spirit is human history; and the time-space of
philosophy, the history of philosophy:
This being-there and thereby being-in-time is a moment, not only of sin
gle consciousness in general that as such is essentially finite, but also [a
moment] of the development of the philosophical Idea in the element of
thinking ... and so pure philosophy appears in thinking as an existence
proceeding through time.67
Thus, Hegel determines space and time as, respectively, the immedi
ate and mediated dimensions of the Idea's externality. In the element
of thought?the speculative mode of which is philosophy?the Idea
displays its immediacy in thought's logic and its mediation in
thought's history. The fact that nature as a whole is one mode of actu
alization of the Idea explains why every natural event must always be
codetermined by space and time. The fact that spirit as a whole is the
other mode of actualization of the Idea makes it intelligible why both
logic and history are quintessential determinations of thinking in gen
eral?and of philosophic thinking in particular. Only the kind of ratio
cination that abstracts from thought's actual existence separates arti
ficially its logic from its history. In actuality, however, they will
always be found to codetermine the self-actualization of spirit that
thinking is.
(2) The thesis of the coincidence of logical and historical dimen
sions in the Idea's development as philosophy finds some intrasystem
atic support also in Hegel's conception of the movement of conscious
ness from substance to subjectivity. In the chapter on Absolute
Knowing from the 1807 Phenomenology, Hegel recapitulates briefly
the phases of consciousness described in the book. Consciousness
starts out as "substance," that is, as simple identity of form and con
tent or thought and object. It then develops by progressive internal
diremptions, by which the originally immediate identity rev?ales itself
to be (and thus becomes for itself) a mediated one, or a unity of oppo
site determinations. In the end, absolute knowing represents a phase
67 "Diss Daseyn und damit in der Zeit seyn, ist ein Moment nicht nur des
einzelnen Bewusstseyns ueberhaupt, das als solches wesentlich endlich ist,
sondern auch der Entwicklung der philosophischen Idee im Elemente des
Denkens ... und so erscheint im Denken die reine Philosophie als eine in der
Zeit fortschreitende Existenz" (GW 18:52-3).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 27
in which consciousness has sublated its own diremptions so that it
now recognizes its initial substantiality as having been all along also
subjectivity. Hegel then remarks that, taken as a whole, the move
ment of consciousness described in the Phenomenology appears to be
proceeding in two parallel but seemingly contrary directions. Re
aliter, consciousness as substance must be thought of as preceding
self-knowing consciousness (in the same way that nature must be
thought of as preceding spirit, or the natural soul as preceding con
sciousness and mind): "Now, knowing substance is there in actuality
earlier than its form or conceptual shape."68 But for a substance to
self-develop at all, it must contain from the beginning the internal prin
ciple of its movement. From a logical perspective, then, substance's
capacity for knowing and then self-knowing, its subjective dynamis
or "conceptual shape," precedes consciousness in the substantial
mode. This arch? is, in Hegel's terminology, the concept or truth of
consciousness, namely self-consciousness. Spirit is the dynamic unity
of the principle or concept of consciousness with that of which it is
the principle or concept, namely substance: spirit "is in itself the
movement that knowing is?the transformation of that in-itself into
the for-itself of substance into subject, of the object of consciousness
into object of self-consciousness, that is,... into the Concept.'"69
Being a form of spirit, self-consciousness is a process, not a state
(it is metabol? and not hexis). It consists of the permanent recapitula
tion, that is, acknowledgment and preservation, of all stages of know
ing that lead up to it. In absolute knowing, past forms of conscious
ness are not present only in their in-itself mode (as archeological
curiosities) but always also in their for-itself mode (as stages and com
ponents of consciousness's own grasp of itself). In this way, while
Hegel denies definitiveness to each stage of consciousness, he re
stores validity to every one of them precisely in the logical transitions
by which each is overcome.
68 "In der Wirklichkeit ist nun die wissende Substanz frueher da, als die
Form oder Begriffsgestalt derselben" (GW 9:428).
69 "[Der Geist] ... ist an sich die Bewegung, die das Erkennen ist?die
Verwandlung jenes Ansichs in das Fuersich, der Substanz in das Subject, des
Gegenstands des Bewusstseyns in Gegenstand des Selbstbewusstseyns, d.h.
... in den Begriff (GW 9:429).
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28 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
This entire movement from a substantial and abstract to an in
creasingly subjective and concrete form of spirit could never take
place if the possibility of the latter were not included in the former
logically, namely as its intrinsic telos:
Thus, in the Concept that knows itself as Concept the moments emerge
earlier than the fulfilled whole whose becoming is the movement of
those moments. Contrarywise, in consciousness the whole, though un
conceptualized, is earlier than the moments.70
The phenomenological thesis that the logical and real developments
of consciousness appear as parallel and contrary movements while
being realiter the same, reemerges in the 1820 Introduction to explain
the definition of philosophy as unfolding of absolute spirit. Hegel
states here that philosophic thinking proceeds "on a seemingly in
verse path"71 to that of its historical unfolding. The seeming inversion
arises from the circumstance that the philosopher studying the real
progression of philosophy has to "already bring along the knowledge
of the Idea in order to recognize the process as development of the
Idea."72 The philosopher knows the Idea thanks to his privileged his
torical position. He can look back at the Idea's historical unfolding.
This unfolding is what makes up the content (the "fulfilled whole") of
the concept of philosophy. Since philosophy is thought that thinks it
self, it fulfills two roles at once. As object of itself, its past phases or
moments appear to it as preceding present thought, the subject of
philosophic knowing. As subject, however, philosophic thinking
grasps its present state (the unity resulting from the sublation of those
moments) as lending intelligibility to its own past in the first place. In
their embodiments as principles of systems, the moments of this pro
cess are the logical elements of the present, concrete concept of phi
losophy. In this sense, the series of systems in the history of philo
70 "In dem Begriffe, der sich als Begriff weiss, treten hiemit die Momente
frueher auf, als das erfuellte Ganze, dessen Werden die Bewegung jener Mo
mente ist. In dem Bewusstseyn dagegen ist das Ganze, aber unbegriffne,
frueher als die Momente" (GW 9:429).
71 "auf anscheinend umgekehrtem Wege" (GW 18:45).
72 "um . . . ihren [der Philosophie] Fortgang als Entwicklung der Idee zu
erkennen, muss man freylich die Erkenntnis der Idee schon mitbringen"
(GW 18:50).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 29
sophic thinking can be interpreted as being "the same" as the logical
series of self-determinations of the Idea.
Ill
Taking seriously the central claim from the 1820 Introduction has
far reaching consequences in one's grasp, interpretation, and evalua
tion of Hegel's conception of philosophy as systematic science of
truth. Only one such consequence, bearing upon Hegel's understand
ing of the history of philosophy, can be discussed here.
A widespread view attributes to Hegel the thesis that philoso
phy's function with regard to the cultural and political reality it ex
presses and responds to is purely recollective. At least in part, the
popularity of this reading is strengthened by the paraphrasing charac
ter of English translations of a famous passage from the Preface to the
1821 Philosophy of Right. Hegel speaks here of philosophy as making
its appearance "after actuality has completed its formative process
and has made itself ready."73 Translations usually disregard the reflex
ive form of sich fertig machen, a common expression that means "to
make oneself ready," and interpret the phrase as indicating that actu
ality is "finished" (fertig).14 But the reflexive form implies both com
pletion and preparedness. Since completion is expressed in the pre
ceding phrase ("actuality has completed its formative process"), and
Hegel's prose is seldom redundant, the connotation of "preparedness"
should be stressed in translation. Actuality has completed one of its
phases and has made itself ready for the next. More importantly,
since the subject of the phrase is actuality, the translation is also at
odds with Hegel's consistently Aristotelian use of "actuality" as an ac
tivity that by definition does not attain any "completed state." Thus,
translations neglect here to convey Hegel's idea of a recollective and
simultaneously anticipatory function of philosophy. Indeed, if the
73 "nachdem die Wirklichkeit ihren Bildungsprozess vollendet und sich
fertig gemacht hat" (W 7:28).
74 Knox, Philosophy of Right, paraphrases sich fertig gemacht hat with
"is already there cut and dried" (12); Nisbet, Elements, with "has attained its
completed state" (23).
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30 ALLEGRADE LAURENTIIS
history of philosophic thinking follows the logic of the Idea, then
philosophic principles must be as much determined by those they
have sublated as by the ones they contain as yet only implicitly. As in
causal chains, where effects must be implicit in the causes they in
turn sub?ate, or as in a chain of syllogisms (the image Hegel invokes at
the end of the system75 to illustrate the concept of philosophy as "Idea
thinking itself'),76 the sublation of earlier into later principles also
implies the immanence of the latter in the former. Thus, while it is
true that for Hegel the principles of a system, in sublating all previous
ones, do express an epoch whose life cycle is concluded, it is equally
true that these same principles anticipate a new epoch.
Prima facie this appears to contradict the "owl of Minerva" alle
gory from the Preface to the Philosophy of Right. But the allegory
(often quoted out of context) intends to highlight only one of the func
tions Hegel attributes to philosophy. It is embedded in a passage vig
orously directed against the idea of a moralistic, ideological, or gener
ically normative vocation of philosophy and philosophers. Hegel's
main concern here is to criticize the assumption that philosophers'
role is to set the world aright by positing normative criteria not al
ready present in it: "By way of adding one more word about giving in
struction as to how the world ought to be: philosophy at any rate al
ways arrives too late to do so."77 If the history of philosophy is the
outward expression of spirit's process of self-knowing, the owl alle
gory cannot be taken to capture the whole of philosophy's functions.
By expressing the final wisdom of one decaying epoch, philosophy
provides the first full grasp of it. But to grasp is always to go beyond
the limitations of what is being grasped (Begreifen is Uebergreifen).78
Philosophy, says Hegel, is "the thought of the world."79 Though it at
tains systematic completion at the end of an epoch, it thinks beyond
this end. The historical conception of philosophy from the Preface to
75E, ??575-7.
76E, ?574.
77 "Um noch ueber das Belehren, wie die Welt sein soll, ein Wort zu
sagen, so kommt dazu ohnehin die Philosophie immer zu spaet" (W 7:27-8).
78 Compare n. 35.
79 "der Gedanke der Welt" (W 7:28).
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METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS 31
the Philosophy of Right is indeed the same as the conception of spirit
we find at its conclusion:
The history of the spirit is its deed, as spirit is only what it does, and its
deed consists ... of making itself into the object of its consciousness.
... This comprehending is its being and principle, and the completion of
one comprehending is at once its externalization and transition.80
Thus, each philosophic system grasps both an epochal closure of
spirit and the new beginning for which it has "made itself ready."
State University of New York at Stony Brook
80 "Die Geschichte des Geistes is seine Tat, denn er ist nur, was er tut,
und seine Tat ist, sich ... zum Gegenstande seines Bewusstseins zu machen.
... Dies Erfassen ist sein Sein und Prinzip, und die Vollendung eines Erfas
sens ist zugleich seine Entaeusserung und sein Uebergang" (W 7:?343).
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