HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF REALITY,

FREEDOM, AND GOD

In this book, Robert Wallace shows that the repeated pronouncements of
the death of Hegel’s philosophical system have been premature. Wallace
brings to light unique arguments in Hegel for the reality of freedom, of
God, and of knowledge – each of them understood as intimately con-
nected to nature, but not as reducible to it – and for the irrationality of
egoism. And Wallace systematically answers many of the major criticisms
that have been leveled at Hegel’s system, from Feuerbach, Kierkegaard,
and Marx through Heidegger and Charles Taylor.
The book provides detailed interpretations of the major works of
Hegel’s mature system – his entire Philosophy of Spirit, most of his in-
dispensable Science of Logic, and key parts of his Philosophy of Nature and
Philosophy of Right.
With the exception of Chapters 4 and 5, which will particularly interest
advanced students, Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God is written
for students of philosophy at all levels. Wallace explains Hegel’s terminol-
ogy thoroughly, analyzes many important passages from Hegel’s works in
detail, and outlines alternative approaches (Plato’s, Hume’s, and Kant’s,
among others), so that the distinctiveness of Hegel’s solutions becomes
apparent.

Robert M. Wallace is a writer and scholar who has taught at Colgate Uni-
versity, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
and Goddard College. He has translated and written introductions to
Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Work on Myth, and The
Genesis of the Copernican World and has published papers on Blumenberg
and on Hegel.
 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

General Editor
Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago

Advisory Board
Gary Gutting, University of Notre Dame
Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt University, Berlin
Mark Sacks, University of Essex

Some Recent Titles

Daniel W. Conway: Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game
John P. McCormick: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism
Frederick A. Olafson: Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics
Günter Zöller: Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy
Warren Breckman: Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins
of Radical Social Theory
William Blattner: Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism
Charles Griswold: Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment
Gary Gutting: Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity
Allen Wood: Kant’s Ethical Thought
Karl Ameriks: Kant and the Fate of Autonomy
Alfredo Ferrarin: Hegel and Aristotle
Cristina Lafont: Heidegger, Language, and World-Discourse
Nicholas Wolsterstorff: Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
Daniel Dahlstrom: Heidegger’s Concept of Truth
Michelle Grier: Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion
Henry Allison: Kant’s Theory of Taste
Allen Speight: Hegel, Literature, and the Problem of Agency
J. M. Bernstein: Adorno
 HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF
REALITY, FREEDOM, AND GOD

ROBERT M. WALLACE
 cambridge university press
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Cambridge University Press

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c Robert M. Wallace 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

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no reproduction of any part may take place without
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Wallace, Robert M., 1947–
Hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and God / Robert M. Wallace.
p. cm. – (Modern European philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-521-84484-3
1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. I. Title. II. Series
b2948.w348 2005
193–dc22 2004065038

isbn-13 978-0-521-84484-0 hardback

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 For my father and mother,
Robert S. Wallace, Jr., and Margaret M. Wallace
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments page xv
Publication Citation Style xvii
Preface xxiii

1. Introduction 1
1.1 our commitment to individualism and our
problems with it 1
1.2 hegel endorses individualism – as a point
of departure 5

2. Naturalism, Plato, Kant, and Hegel on Reason, Freedom,

Responsibility, Ethics, and God 10
2.1 kant and hegel on the will 10
2.2 is this “freedom” actually slavery
(for the “inclinations”)? 18
2.3 is this “freedom” ethically empty ? 20
2.4 is this “going beyond . . . ” really “ freedom ”? 22
2.5 individualism and ethics: hobbes
and gauthier 27
2.6 an early critic of hobbes and gauthier:
plato on the will and justice 31
2.7 kant on individualism (“autonomy”)
and ethics: the apparent failure of a
great argument 39
2.8 hegel’s reformulation of kant’s argument
from autonomy to ethics 42
2.9 kant and hegel on god and the world 44

ix
x contents

3. Reality, Freedom, and God (Science of Logic I) 48

3.1 introduction 48
3.2 objective thinking 53
3.3 being 54
3.4 determinate being, quality, and the
beginning of the subject 59
3.5 “negativity,” or the “negation of
the negation” 64
3.6 finite being 66
3.7 the finite and the infinite 69
3.8 infinity, freedom, and nature 73
3.9 spurious infinity and true infinity 76
3.10 empiricism, dualism, and true infinity 80
3.11 how hegel’s position relates to
“compatibilism” and “incompatibilism” 82
3.12 true infinity, “striving,” and “actuality” 83
3.13 true infinity and the “negation of the
negation” 86
3.14 substance and subject 88
3.15 modernity and “metaphysics”: hegel and
his predecessors 91
3.16 reality and ideality, “realism” and
“idealism” 92
3.17 true infinity and god 96
3.18 two contrasting critiques of hegel’s
theology: heidegger and magee 103
3.19 knowledge, skepticism, and true
infinity 109
3.20 knowledge and “faith” 116
3.21 earlier versions of these ideas, in
hegel’s development 118
3.22 charles taylor’s interpretation of
true infinity 122
3.23 hegel not an “atomist” 126
3.24 being-for-self and the “collapse” of
true infinity 127
3.25 atomism 132
3.26 social atomism 136
 contents xi

4. Identity, Contradiction, Actuality, and Freedom

(Science of Logic II) 141
4.1 introduction to chapters 4 and 5 141
4.2 quantity and the theme of “unity” 143
4.3 measure 147
4.4 absolute indifference 152
4.5 beyond absolute indifference: essence 154
4.6 introduction to essence:
being-in-and-for-self 155
4.7 essence as shine and negativity: hegel’s
new conception of immediacy or being,
and his critique of “the given” 159
4.8 essence as reflection 169
4.9 the reflection-determinations: identity
and difference 175
4.10 the reflection-determinations:
difference 178
4.11 the reflection-determinations:
from diversity to opposition 180
4.12 the reflection-determinations:
from opposition to contradiction 184
4.13 from reflection to actuality 190
4.14 from actuality to absolute necessity 192
4.15 the actual and the rational 197
4.16 substance and causality 199
4.17 from reciprocal action to freedom 202
4.18 what sort of “freedom” is this? 208

5. Freedom, God, and the Refutation of Rational Egoism

(Science of Logic III) 214
5.1 from substance to the “concept” 214
5.2 the concept as “free love ” and true
infinity 216
5.3 why call this a “concept”? 218
5.4 substance and subject 224
5.5 particularity and singularity;
“abstractness” and “emptiness” versus
“concreteness” 228
5.6 the “emptiness” of kant’s principle of
ethics 231
xii contents

5.7 the concept and the will ( philosophy of

right , introduction) 233
5.8 from the concept (“subjectivity”) to
objectivity 237
5.9 from objectivity to the “idea” 239
5.10 the “idea,” reason, and actuality 243
5.11 can metaphysics, like this, be rationally
defended? 246
5.12 the idea, the “cunning” of reason, and
“god” 247
5.13 the idea as life 249
5.14 the “genus”: universality and “identity
with the other” 250
5.15 the “death” of the living individual 253
5.16 the idea as “cognition,” or spirit 258
5.17 the absolute idea as a refutation
of egoism 260
5.18 “method” as being and as result:
the circle closes 265

6. Nature, Freedom, Ethics, and God (The Philosophy of

Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit) 268
6.1 from logic to nature to spirit 268
6.2 subjectivity within nature 270
6.3 spirit 276
6.4 subjective spirit: “soul” 279
6.5 subjective spirit: “consciousness” 283
6.5.1 self-consciousness, “recognition,”
and reason 285
6.6 subjective spirit: “spirit as such,”
theoretical, practical, and free 292
6.7 objective spirit: introduction 298
6.8 objective spirit: abstract “right,”
property and wrong 298
6.9 objective spirit: “morality,” conscience
and evil 299
6.10 objective spirit: “ethical life”
( sittlichkeit ) 302
6.11 absolute spirit: introduction 308
 contents xiii

6.12 absolute spirit: art 312

6.13 absolute spirit: revealed religion 313
6.14 absolute spirit: philosophy 316
7. Conclusion 319

Index 323
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During this book’s long gestation, I have been helped by an amazing

variety of people. To begin with, my father shared with me his love of
philosophy, and especially of the British Idealists. My mother supported
me and still supports me with her love and intelligence.
Of all my teachers, Alan Strain taught me, by his example, that Spirit
deserves our love just as much as nature does.
Alan Montefiore, Tony (now Sir Anthony) Kenny, and Stephen Lukes
taught me Kant, Descartes, ethics, and political philosophy at Oxford.
Through his works and over the phone, Hans Blumenberg taught me
about the interaction of science, religion, literature, and philosophy.
At Yale, Karsten Harries gave me a taste of Heidegger and Nicholas of
Cusa.
At Cornell, Allen Wood, Terry Irwin, and Richard W. Miller taught
me German philosophy, Greek philosophy, ethics, and political philos-
ophy, and they supervised my dissertation on F. H. Bradley and Hegel.
And Norman Kretzmann, at Cornell, showed me how to take theology
seriously as a possible domain of knowledge.
In my work on Hegel, I have received valuable help and stimulation,
especially from Allen Wood and also from Chris Wagner, David Morris,
David Adams, Bruce Krajewski, Paul Redding, Ken Westphal, Fred
Neuhouser, Bill Wainwright, Bob Pippin, Richard Schacht, Willem
deVries, Jeff Edwards, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Allegra DeLaurentiis,
Thad Metz, Michael Wolff, Karl Ameriks, Will Dudley, Beat Greuter,
Volker Buehn, Kirk Pillow, Klaus Brinkmann, Ed Witherspoon, Maude
Clark, Jon Jacobs, Stephen Houlgate, Michelle Kosch, and John Bardis.
The American Council of Learned Societies and the National En-
dowment for the Humanities gave me fellowships that were a great
help in writing the book.

xv
xvi acknowledgments

Nancy Wallace and Carol Roberts helped me to improve my writing.

Graham Andrews and Dave Duveneck sustained me, both intellectually
and spiritually. Tom Bennigson was a good buddy.
My children, Ishmael, Vita, Nina, and Meg, gave me lots of pleasure
and taught me patience and hope.
Three anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press offered
important questions and encouragement. Ronald Cohen provided ex-
cellent editing, and Diana Witt did an admirable job of indexing the
book.
And finally, my life with my wife, Kathy Kouzmanoff, has shown me
the meaning of ecstasy.
I am grateful for all of this help. For the book’s inadequacies, I claim
full credit.
 PUBLICATION CITATION STYLE

All translations from the works listed here are my own (though they are
often much indebted to previous translations). I have not always pre-
served all of Hegel’s italics in my translations. Standard English trans-
lations, indicated in the list, are normally cited along with the original,
with English pagination following German pagination, separated by a
slash (/). References simply to volume followed by page number (as
in “2:320”) are to TWA. Where paragraph numbers are available, I
cite them (§). Hegel’s “Remarks” (Anmerkungen) are indicated by “R,”
and editorial “Additions” (Zusätze), drawn from lecture transcripts, are
indicated by “A.”
Citations of Hegel’s Science of Logic begin with WL (TWA) page num-
bers, followed after another slash by GW page numbers, followed after
another slash by the Miller translation page number. Together with the
GW page number, I often also give line numbers (as in “GW 11:251,
13–18”). Unlike the page numbers, however, these line numbers are
not those in GW itself, but those from the corresponding page in the
widely used “study edition” (edited by Hans-Jürgen Gawoll) of the same
text, listed under WL. Gawoll’s edition gives the GW page numbers and
its own line numbers. Though the reference of these line numbers, in
my citations, will occasionally be ambiguous (because Gawoll’s pagina-
tion doesn’t coincide with GW’s, so that sometimes a given line number
in Gawoll may indicate two different passages on one page of GW), I
think they will still provide a significant convenience to readers who use
Gawoll’s edition, while the GW page numbers are, of course, essential
for completeness.

xvii
xviii publication citation style

Writings of G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)

Diff The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philos-
ophy. Translated by H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf. Albany:
SUNY Press, 1977.
EG Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften III (1817, rev.
1827, 1830), TWA vol. 10.

Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind. Translated by William Wallace and A. V. Miller.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. In the text, I refer to this book,
consistent with present-day translation practice, as Hegel’s Philosophy of
Spirit.

EL Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I (1817, rev.

1827, 1830), TWA vol. 8.

The Encyclopedia Logic. Translated by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and

H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991.

EN Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften II (1817, rev.

1827, 1830), TWA vol. 9.

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature. Translated by Michael J. Petry. New York:

Humanities Press, 1970.

EPW27 Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1827), GW

vol. 19. Edited by W. Bonsiepen and H.-C. Lucas. Hamburg:
Meiner, 1989.

ETW Early Theological Writings. Translated by T. M. Knox.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.

FK Faith and Knowledge. Translated by W. Cerf and H. S. Harris.

Albany: SUNY Press, 1977.

GW Gesammelte Werke. Kritische Ausgabe. Hamburg: Meiner,

1968–.

LPRel27 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. One-Volume Edition. The

Lectures of 1827. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1988.
 publication citation style xix

LPR Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Peter C.

Hodgson. 3 volumes. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984–1987.

LPWH Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction. Trans-

lated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1975.

NR Ueber die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts,

seine Stellung in der praktischen Philosophie und sein Verhältnis
zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften (1802–1803), TWA
vol. 2.

Natural Law. Translated by T. M. Knox. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1975.

PhG Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), TWA vol. 3.

Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1977.

PR Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821), TWA vol. 7.

Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by H. B. Nisbet,

edited by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992.

Skep “On the Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy, Exposi-

tion of Its Different Modifications and Comparison of the
Latest Form with the Ancient One.” In Between Kant and
Hegel. Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism. Trans-
lated by George DiGiovanni and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2000.

TWA Werke in zwanzig Bänden: Theorie Werkausgabe. Edited by

E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1970. Cited by volume and page number.

VPR Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie. Edited by K.-H. Ilting.

Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1974. 4 volumes; cited by
volume and page number.
xx publication citation style

VPR17 Die Philosophie des Rechts: Die Mitschriften Wannenmann

(Heidelberg 1817–1818) und Homeyer (Berlin 1818–1819).
Edited by K.-H. Ilting. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag,
1983.

VPR19 Philosophie des Rechts: Die Vorlesung von 1819/1820. Edited

by Dieter Henrich. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983.

VPRel Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Edited by Walter

Jaeschke. 3 volumes. Hamburg: Meiner, 1983–1985.

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson.

3 volumes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984–1987.

WL Wissenschaft der Logik (1832), TWA vols. 5 and 6, and GW

vols. 21, 11, and 12. Page numbers cited; see the headnote
at the beginning of this list of abbreviations.

Wissenschaft der Logik. Edited by Hans-Jürgen Gawoll. 3 volumes.

Hamburg: Meiner, 1990, 1994, 1999. Philosophische Bibliothek 376,
377, 385. Line numbers cited; see beginning headnote.

Hegel’s Science of Logic. Translated by A. V. Miller. Atlantic Highlands,

N.J.: Humanities Press, 1989. Page numbers cited; see beginning
headnote.

WLfe Wissenschaft der Logik. Das Sein (1812), in GW, vol. 11.

Writings of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

A/B Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781/1787). Edited by Raymund
Schmidt. Hamburg: Meiner, 1956.

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp

Smith. New York: St. Martin’s, 1963. Cited by first edition (A) and sec-
ond edition (B) page numbers.

G Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Ak. 4. Cited by

Ak. page number.
 publication citation style xxi

Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H. Paton. New York:

Harper, 1964.

Ak. Kants Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Ausgabe der königlich

preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1910–.

KprV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Ak 5. Cited by Ak. page

number.

Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1956.

KU Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Ak. 5.

The Critique of Judgment. Translated by J. C. Meredith. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1952.

MS Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), Ak. 6. Cited by Ak. page num-

ber.

The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991.

R Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (1793–

1794), Ak. 6.

Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. Translated by Theodore M.

Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson. New York: Harper and Row, 1960.

Writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814)

SW J. G. Fichte’s Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by J. H. Fichte. 3 vols.
Berlin: Veit, 1845.
 PREFACE

Modern philosophy and social thought are preoccupied with the indi-
vidual, or (as philosophers often entitle her) “the subject.” We analyze
and address ourselves to a person who either does or should think for
herself, seek to satisfy her own preferences, seek to be herself, and possess
her own freedom and rights. On the other hand, we wonder whether in
this preoccupation we might be missing something of fundamental im-
portance. Empirical scientists tell us that what we call “thinking for
ourselves” is really just another causally determined process in nature;
skeptics tell us that we have no reason to think that thought of this kind
can give us access to reality; post-modernists tell us that the subject or
the self, itself, is an illusion; defenders of “traditional values” tell us that
there is nothing to deter a subject or a self that sets its authority above
that of tradition from disregarding the rights and interests of others;
and religious thinkers tell us that insistence on one’s own freedom and
independence may prevent one from experiencing the affiliation with
reality as a whole, and the resulting meaning, value, and identity, that
can be found through a relationship with God. All of these critics are
likely to suggest that the mere existence of an individual, as such, gives
no access to any authoritative conception of value.
These critics raise important issues. It is indeed difficult to know how
to relate the idea of “free” thought to nature as we normally understand
it, or to defend the claim that such thought gives us access to reality;
the “subject” or “self” does often seem almost vanishingly abstract; it is
not clear that the challenge that rational egoism poses to ethics has yet
been effectively met by ethical theory; and it does sometimes appear
that people with access to religious or “spiritual” sources of nurture
can flourish in ways that atheistic humanists may not flourish. The gap

xxiii
xxiv preface

between “fact” and “value” seems wide (even if philosophers now are
somewhat less likely to make dogmatic assertions about it than they
were in the first half of the twentieth century). In fact, it does not seem
unreasonable to imagine that these apparent intellectual and practical
failures of modern individualism may contribute to modern people’s
frequent failures to feel “at home” in their social and natural worlds,
and to the lapses into selfishness, ideological idées fixes, violence, and
despair that are sometimes associated with these failures.
The problem is that the alternative modes of life and thought that
are projected by these critiques of modern individualism – the “homes”
to which they explicitly or implicitly advise us to return – all seem, in
their various ways, to threaten individuals’ freedom, which is something
that many of us are loath, and feel that we have good reasons for being
loath, to give up or to compromise.1
How can we address these issues, intellectually, without merely laps-
ing into one schematic extreme or the other, or settling for a merely
formless and unprincipled “compromise”? In the history of modern
thought on these subjects we find one major thinker who not only re-
fuses to lapse into any schematic extreme position on these issues but
addresses them in a uniquely constructive way. That thinker is Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
To cut through the confusion that, for many educated people, sur-
rounds Hegel’s name, and that results from the great ambition, com-
plexity, and novelty of his undertaking, combined with the religious
and political controversies in which it has, almost from the beginning,
been caught up, one of the first things to realize is that the concep-
tion of rational freedom that is Hegel’s point of departure in his ethics
and social philosophy and that runs through his metaphysics and philo-
sophical theology is very closely related to that of his great predecessor,
Immanuel Kant. Whatever else they may think of Kant’s philosophy, few
people will question his credentials as an individualist. His “motto of
enlightenment: . . . Have courage to use your own understanding!” and
his identification of rational autonomy – “the property which will has of
being a law to itself” – as the foundation of morality are usually sufficient

1 There is a long tradition in modern thought of seeing modernity as homeless or estranged

and in need of a “return” to something else. The German Romantic poet Novalis wrote
that “philosophy is actually homesickness” (Werke und Briefe, ed. E. Kelletat [Munich:
Winkler, 1962], p. 422; cited by David Adams, Colonial Odysseys. Empire and Epic in the
Modernist Novel [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003], p. 51). Adams provides a
rich discussion of this theme in his chapter 2.
 preface xxv

to establish those credentials.2 Interpreters of Hegel naturally devote a

lot of attention to his criticisms of Kant, and to the ways in which his the-
ories of reality, God, knowledge, ethics, and society differ from Kant’s;
but if we compare Hegel, instead, with really different thinkers such as
Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Edmund Burke, or Friedrich Nietzsche,
it becomes evident that rather than starting from completely different
principles, Hegel relates to Kant in much the same way that Aristotle
did to Plato: He is an ambitious and independent student, who wants
to avoid what he sees as the errors and build on what he sees as the
accomplishments of his teacher.3
Indeed, what Hegel attempts to do with Kant’s fundamental ideas –
and with individualism in general – is to preserve what is true in them,
while reformulating them in such a way as to avoid the problems in which
they otherwise become bogged down.4 In this way, Hegel’s project is
precisely to overcome the schematic dualism of individualism and its
opposites, in order to get at and do systematic justice to the truth both
of individualism and of the important objections that are raised against

2 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question, ‘What is Enlightenment?’” in Kant’s Po-
litical Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 54;
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. Paton (New York: Harper, 1964), p. 114
(Ak. 447). It is true that some jaundiced observers have thought that they saw in the
notion of autonomy the germ of later totalitarian developments, but I am not aware
of anyone who thinks she can show such developments taking place within Kant’s own
thinking. There are limits, of course, to Kant’s grasp of the practical implications of
autonomy in connection with “marginal” groups such as women, non-Europeans, and
people who possess no property, but these limits do not follow from his conception of
autonomy itself, nor does he make a serious effort to show that they do.
3 Hegel didn’t literally study with Kant, but Kant was the single most important influence
on every student of philosophy in Hegel’s generation in Germany. Here are a couple of
Hegel’s strong endorsements of Kantian ideas: “It is one of the profoundest and truest
insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the na-
ture of the Concept is recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity
of the I think, or of self-consciousness” (WL 6:254/GW 12:17–18/584); and “Knowledge
of the will first gained a firm foundation and point of departure in the philosophy of
Kant, through the thought of its infinite autonomy” (PR §135R). I discuss Hegel’s con-
troversial doctrine that “the actual is the rational” in Chapters 4 and 5, and his critique
of Kantian “morality” in 5.6. For an account of Hegel’s theories of freedom and ethics
that makes clear their close affinity to Kant’s conceptions of autonomy and of morality,
see Kenneth Westphal, “How ‘Full’ is Kant’s Categorical Imperative?” Jahrbuch für Recht
und Ethik 3 (1995): 465–509, in particular pp. 491–509. On the side of theory of knowl-
edge, Robert Pippin’s Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989) focuses on the continuity between Kant’s project and
Hegel’s.
4 Hegel has a favorite term, aufheben (translated as “supersede,” “sublate,” and so on),
which has the dual meaning that I have just sketched.
xxvi preface

it. If he succeeds in doing this, his structure of thought presents a

constructive alternative to, and a model of how to improve upon, a
great deal of present-day debate in the philosophy of knowledge and
the will, ethics, social and political theory, and philosophy of religion,
and in endeavors as various as scholarship, political debate, personal
self-examination, and spiritual life.
Because of the centrality of freedom in all of the issues that I listed,
what enables Hegel both to overcome the schematic dualisms into
which we are inclined to fall, in connection with these issues, and to
avoid mere unprincipled “compromise,” is, precisely, his theory of free-
dom. The underlying idea of that theory is to understand freedom as
finding itself not only in what it directly proposes to pursue and in
the thought process that this reflects, but also in what at first seems
opposed to these: in (for example) the mechanisms of one’s own bod-
ily existence, or the intentions and desires of other people. Freedom,
Hegel argues, is being “with oneself in the other” (paraphrase from PR
§7A) – in what initially appears to oppose, conflict with, and detract
from one’s freedom. This general idea is, of course, familiar to every-
one who comments on Hegel’s thoughts about freedom. However, the
background of the idea – what it is based on, how it is developed, and
thus what it really means – is not so familiar. This is because that back-
ground and development are presented mainly in Hegel’s Logic (I use
the capitalized term “Logic” to refer both to Hegel’s Science of Logic and
to his shorter Encyclopedia Logic, which present substantially the same
doctrines). What he develops there is then presupposed throughout
his system, including the Philosophy of Spirit (the third volume of his
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences) and the Philosophy of Right, in
which he presents his account of human affairs, including ethics and
politics. Hegel’s Logic is notorious both for its difficulty and for the con-
troversiality of many of its prominent claims, and these circumstances
deter many scholars from engaging with it in detail. Consequently, many
discussions of Hegel’s thinking about freedom, including almost all of
those published in recent decades in English, neglect its foundation in
the Logic.5

5 The exception is Will Dudley, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), which connects Hegel’s ethics in the Philosophy of
Right to his analysis of the Concept, in the Science of Logic. Allen Wood’s Hegel’s Ethical
Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Alan Patten’s Hegel’s Idea of
Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), Paul Franco’s Hegel’s Philosophy of Free-
dom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); and Frederick Neuhouser’s Foundations of
 preface xxvii

In the Science of Logic, Hegel explains (1) the relationship between

freedom and finitude or nature – the problem that Kant’s “two-worlds”
or “two-standpoints” (“noumenal”/“phenomenal”) account of free-
dom left, in the eyes of many of us, essentially unsolved – and thus
shows what freedom involves and why it is reasonable to regard it as
real. When it is understood, Hegel’s position on this issue will be seen
to be one of the major historical proposals, on a par with those of
St. Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Kant, and hav-
ing apparent advantages over each of them. It will also turn out that
understanding Hegel’s account of the relationship between freedom
and nature enables us to interpret (2) his position on the nature of
knowledge – the reality that the free mind achieves, and therefore has
access to – in a way that frees it of the grandiosity that’s often attributed

Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)
interpret and defend a good deal of what Hegel says about freedom in the Philosophy of
Right and in parts of the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Spirit, but they neither
interpret nor defend his discussions of freedom in the Logic. Likewise, Peter J. Stein-
berger, Logic and Politics: Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1988), does not examine Hegel’s treatment of freedom in the Logic; nor does Robert
Pippin’s “Hegel, Freedom, The Will,” in L. Siep, ed., G. W. F. Hegel. Grundlinien der Philoso-
phie des Rechts (Berlin: Akademie, 1997). Among scholars writing about the Logic in partic-
ular, Justus Hartnack, An Introduction to Hegel’s Logic (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett,
1998); Clark Butler, Hegel’s Logic: Between Dialectic and History (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1996), and Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels Analytische Philosophie. Die
Wissenschaft der Logik als kritische Theorie der Bedeutung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1992) touch
on freedom more often than most do, but none of them consider the relevance of the
Doctrine of Being, and of “Quality,” in particular, to the topic. Bernhard Lakebrink, Die
Europäische Idee der Freiheit: I Teil, Hegels Logik und die Tradition der Selbstbestimmung (Leyden:
Brill, 1968), and Emil Angehrn, Freiheit und System bei Hegel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977), give
extended attention to the discussions of freedom in the Logic, including the Doctrine of
Being; and Brigitte Bitsch, Sollensbegriff und Moralitätskritik bei G. W. F. Hegel (Bonn: Bouvier,
1977), elucidates important aspects of Hegel’s relation to Kant on this issue. But none of
the writers I have mentioned in this note, including Will Dudley in the book that I men-
tioned initially, brings out the train of thought by which Hegel links determinate being
to true infinity; nor do they show how that train of thought serves to defend Kant’s basic
conception of freedom against the criticism that it leaves us without an understanding of
the relation between freedom and nature; nor do they show how Hegel’s argument for
the Concept and the Idea serves to defend true infinity and ethics against the challenges
posed by skepticism and “rational egoism.” Nor do Dieter Henrich, in his publications on
the Logic, or Michael Theunissen, Sein und Schein. Die kritische Funktion der hegelschen Logik
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), or John Burbidge, On Hegel’s Logic: Fragments of a
Commentary (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981), or Klaus Hartmann, Hegels
Logik (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1999), or Christian Iber, Subjectivität, Vernunft und ihre Kritik.
Prager Vorlesungen über den Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), or
Andreas Arndt and Christian Iber, eds., Hegels Seinslogik. Interpretationen und Perspektiven
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), or any other work on the Logic that I have found.
xxviii preface

to it, and shows it to be strikingly original and suggestive; and also to in-
terpret (3) his closely related “idealism” – his doctrine that “substance”
is “subject,” or that being and thought are inseparable – in a way that
makes it (again) non-grandiose, non-dogmatic, and, given the prob-
lems of alternative views, quite attractive. His argument for his idealism
includes, as well, his critique – which is frequently referred to, but has
seldom been well understood – of the idea of a non-conceptual “given”
that is essential to knowledge. (4) Hegel’s idealism connects “value” to
“fact” in a way that allows the desert of modern science to bloom with
meaning, precisely through the free, rational thought that is widely sup-
posed to have deprived it of meaning. (5) In the same manner, Hegel’s
philosophical theology – which generations of “Left Hegelians” have
tried to transform, ignore, or interpret out of existence, and which is
founded on his account of “true infinity,” in the Science of Logic – turns
out not to threaten, but rather to presuppose, the freedom of indi-
vidual humans, while showing how that freedom does connect them
with something that goes beyond their finite, merely individual exis-
tences. In this way, Hegel’s theology shows how we can get beyond the
apparently interminable war between theism and atheistic naturalism.
(6) Hegel’s famous “dialectic,” including his doctrine of the reality of
“contradiction,” turns out to be not an unmotivated departure from
normal logical principles, but a way of articulating his account of the
reality of freedom and God. And finally (7), through his idealism and
his theology – which underlie his much-discussed argument for “mutual
recognition” – Hegel demonstrates what Plato and Kant also sought to
demonstrate: that practical egoism is irrational, so that a practical atti-
tude that amounts to love is, in fact, the most rational attitude to take
toward others. Thus, rather than being a baroque collection of claims
that are so exotic that it’s hard to imagine taking them seriously, Hegel’s
main doctrines in the Logic turn out to illuminate one another and to
resolve fundamental issues in a way that lends credibility to all of them.6

6 I should note that the Science of Logic contains some doctrines that I have not been able to
consider in detail – in particular, its analyses of “Judgment” and “Syllogism.” My neglect
of these topics means that I can’t discuss the relationship between Hegel’s Logic and the
formal logic of Frege, Russell, et al., though I do provide, in Chapter 4, a fairly detailed
interpretation of Hegel’s account of “contradiction,” in which I show that it should be
understood primarily as a thesis about ontology and theology rather than as a thesis about
discourse or argument, as such. I have also skipped quickly past most of Hegel’s lengthy
and rich discussion of mathematics, in “Quantity,” and a good deal of his discussion of
“Ground,” “Existence,” and “Appearance,” in the Doctrine of Essence.
 preface xxix

From the Logic, I proceed in Chapter 6 to the Philosophy of Na-

ture and then to the Philosophy of Spirit, in which Hegel elaborates the
implications of his analysis for human life – the mind, ethics, economics,
politics, history, art, religion, and philosophy – where again I will show
that his main doctrines articulate the content and implications of in-
dividual freedom in a way that is very helpful in getting beyond the
schematic oppositions that pervade our thinking and debate about
these matters.
Thus my investigation of Hegel’s theory of freedom, while it doesn’t
attempt to clarify all of the controversial issues in Hegel’s philosophical
system, will clarify many of the best-known ones and will deal with most
of the major texts that expound the system. I hope that by doing so
it will encourage readers to take Hegel’s philosophy as a whole more
seriously than it has been taken, for almost a century in (at least) the
English-speaking world, by anyone except a relatively small number of
specialists. Where, by “taking Hegel’s philosophy seriously,” I mean:
taking it not merely as a major historical influence on all sorts of other
thinkers, but as a major candidate for truth.
As I mentioned, two main obstacles to a sympathetic reception of
Hegel’s thought, since the 1830s, have been the political and religious
controversies in which it has been involved. The last several decades of
scholarship have done a lot to remove the political misunderstandings
that afflicted the Philosophy of Right, especially in the English-speaking
world, up through the 1960s – though there is certainly room for ad-
ditional productive clarification.7 On the religious and “metaphysical”
side, despite valuable recent work, there is still a major lack of under-
standing. “Left Hegelians,” who hope that Hegel’s most important ideas
are compatible with atheist or agnostic humanism, propound their

7 Good recent work on Hegel’s social and political philosophy includes the books by
Wood, Patten, Franco, Neuhouser, and Steinberger listed in note 4; Z. Pelczynski, ed.,
The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984); Stephen C. Bosworth, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: The Test Case
of Constitutional Monarchy (New York: Garland, 1991); Michael Hardimon, Hegel’s Social
Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
Robert R. Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997); Ludwig Siep, ed., G. W. F. Hegel. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 1997), with detailed bibliographies; and Dudley Knowles, Hegel and
the Philosophy of Right (London: Routledge, 2002). My own contributions to this effort
include “Hegel on ‘Ethical Life’ and Social Criticism,” Journal of Philosophical Research 26
(2001): 571–591, and “How Hegel Reconciles Private Freedom and Citizenship,” Journal
of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 419–433.
xxx preface

ideas, while “Right Hegelians,” who see Hegel as continuing the the-
istic tradition, propound theirs, and a third group describes Hegel’s
theology (with a notable lack of endorsement) as heretical, occultist,
and/or irrationalist. And the general intellectual public can be excused
for being thoroughly uncertain about what Hegel’s position, if he even
has one, really is. My book doesn’t examine the full range of Hegel’s
writings that are relevant to theology and religion; it barely touches on
his lectures on the philosophy of religion and on his early writings about
religion. But by presenting a comprehensive interpretation of the philo-
sophical theology that Hegel presents in his Logic and his Encyclopedia –
which is a philosophical theology that he essentially takes for granted,
rather than developing once again, in his lectures on the philosophy
of religion – the book aims to put readers in a position to understand
how the controversies about Hegel’s philosophical theology, from Chris-
tian Hermann Weisse, Bruno Bauer, and Ludwig Feuerbach, in the
1830s and 1840s, down to Charles Taylor’s Hegel (1975) and Michael
Theunissen’s Sein und Schein (1994), in our time, have arisen, to a large
extent, from a failure to understand the subtle and powerful way in
which Hegel’s philosophical theology, beginning with his conception
of “true infinity,” goes beyond the traditional opposition between theism and
naturalistic atheism, and between “transcendence” and “immanence.” 8 Many
discussions of Hegel’s philosophical theology are preoccupied with the
question of whether it is compatible with traditional or genuine Chris-
tianity. As a member of the large group who view Christianity with great
respect but not as the sole or even, necessarily, the primary represen-
tative of religious truth, I am more interested in the less commonly
discussed question of what Hegel’s theology can show us about the
truth-content of religious experience in general; and there, as I try to
show, it is very illuminating indeed.
A result of this interest of mine, and of the fact that I simply lacked the
time and space to deal with Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,
is that although I have important things to say about Hegel’s relation
to theism, in general, I can’t claim to have dealt comprehensively with

8 This crucial accomplishment of Hegel’s philosophical theology is not made clear even in
such outstanding studies as Dieter Henrich, Der ontologische Gottesbeweis: Sein Problem und
seine Geschichte in der Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr, 1967) (which contains a valuable chapter
on Hegel); Walter Jaeschke, Reason and Religion: The Foundations of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and Stephen Crites, Dialectic and
Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1998).
 preface xxxi

Hegel’s relation to Christianity, in particular. That will have to wait for

another occasion.
Besides clarifying Hegel’s relation to theism, I also aim to show how
his metaphysics and philosophical theology are intimately linked to his
ethical, social, and political thinking, not in the way that his “left” crit-
ics fear (namely, by imposing an order on humans that originates in a
power that is separate from and opposed to them), but rather in that
they provide his argument for the crucial thesis that full freedom and
individuality require ethics – that a truly free agent cannot be uncon-
cerned about others. The tendency of commentators on Hegel’s ethical
thinking to avoid his controversial philosophical theology, along with
his idealism and his metaphysics in general, has prevented them from
appreciating much of what he has to offer with regard to this funda-
mental issue in ethical theory – the question of whether sheer, unethi-
cal selfishness isn’t perfectly rational – which is centrally important for
such predecessors of Hegel as Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and
Kant, and is equally important for any thoughtful person who wants to
understand why moral standards are important to her.9
A third major obstacle to understanding Hegel’s proposals has, of
course, been the great difficulty of assimilating his specialized termi-
nology, his dense arguments, and his long books. I am grateful to all
of the scholars who have preceded me in this effort and whose work I
have been able to study, including – and, often, especially! – those with
whom I have major disagreements. I certainly don’t imagine that my
interpretations are the last word on any of Hegel’s arguments, and I

9 I have not found any commentator who explores Hegel’s critique of “atomism,” “external
reflection,” “diversity,” “mechanism,” and so forth, in his Logic, as his most fundamental
response to the putative rationality of egoism. Allen Wood identifies Hegel’s account
of “recognition,” in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Spirit, as Hegel’s
rebuttal of rational egoism, but concludes that in fact this account “gives me no reason for
respecting the rights of others if I happen to prefer freedom in the ordinary sense to self-
certainty or absolute freedom in the Hegelian sense” (Hegel’s Ethical Thought [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990], p. 92). Robert R. Williams, in his account of Hegel’s
Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), does not identify
rational egoism as a challenge that Hegel’s philosophy addresses. I discuss some of the
history of social atomism, “rational egoism,” and responses to them, in Chapter 2, and I
discuss Hegel’s treatment of the issue in Chapters 3–6. Paul Redding’s Hegel’s Hermeneutics
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) is the only book I’m aware of that suggests
that Hegel’s account of “recognition,” in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of
Spirit, is an elaboration of ideas that first emerge (in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences) in his Logic. (See Hegel’s Hermeneutics, pp. 156–165.) It will be clear from Chapters
5 and 6 that I have found this to be an extremely fruitful hypothesis.
xxxii preface

look forward to a wider and deeper discussion of these arguments as

people become aware of how richly the long effort that is needed to
penetrate them can be rewarded.
To readers who are not familiar with Hegel’s Logic or his other works,
and are perhaps not familiar with some of the other philosophical clas-
sics that I refer to in the book, I would say that one doesn’t have to be
a scholar to appreciate and be inspired by these ideas. Their relevance
is so broad that any thoughtful person should find something here that
speaks to her. The unavoidable fact is that parts of the book – especially, I
suspect, Chapter 4 – will be challenging for most non-specialist readers.
These parts try to untangle some very difficult texts, and they do so in
detail because it turns out that it’s only through a detailed understand-
ing of (some of) Hegel’s texts that one gets a proper understanding
even of his overall intentions. There are innumerable “summaries of
Hegel” in circulation – of which the triad of “Thesis, Antithesis, and
Synthesis” is only the most famous – that only distract attention from
what he is really up to in particular arguments and in his system as a
whole, so the only way to get a sense of what’s really going on is to
dive into some of those particular arguments. So with my book, as with
Hegel’s, I encourage you to pick and choose, skip forward and go back
to the harder parts when you have the time and the energy to tussle
with them. I have tried to give a sufficiently detailed account of most of
the key arguments in the Logic (with the exceptions mentioned in note
5) to enable a motivated student to pick out, in Hegel’s text, the major
turning points and the reasons that Hegel gives for them. In the case of
the Philosophy of Nature, I have dealt in detail (in Chapter 6) only with
the later portions of the work; and in the Philosophy of Spirit, of which
I present a complete precis in Chapter 6, I have provided no critical
discussion of some of the major issues (for example) in Hegel’s political
theory. Good discussions of many of these issues are available in recent
books in English. My analyses of Hegel’s “Anthropology,” his account of
mutual recognition, his “Psychology,” his critique of “Morality,” and his
transition to “Absolute Spirit,” on the other hand, though condensed,
are more thorough, in important ways, than what I have seen elsewhere,
because they trace the way in which these discussions develop from the
Logic.
Finally, a sketch of my wider hopes. It seems to me that it should be
possible, in our time, for Hegel’s project to be understood and to be
appreciated more for what it is, and less for the stereotypes to which
it is easy to assimilate isolated dicta or parts of it. (1) The destruction
 preface xxxiii

of logical positivism or logical empiricism (which was the dominant

program in Anglo-American philosophy in the twentieth century) by
its own self-criticism; (2) the renewed interest in other philosophical
and theological traditions that resulted, and the great work that has
been done by historical scholarship on them; together with (3) the
ongoing self-examination and self-criticism of European and American
politics, culture, and religion that has occurred, spurred on by painful
experience, in the same period, have made us open to learning about
new ways of thinking and new ways of understanding our habitual ways
of thinking. Hegel has a lot to offer to people in this situation. If I
have contributed to the appreciation of what he has to offer and to the
possibility of truly appropriating what he has to offer and improving on
it, I will be happy.

NOTE. In order to be able to use the references to Hegel’s texts that

I give in the course of my discussion, readers should consult the head-
note under “List of Abbreviations.” This will enable them to interpret
a system of reference which, though I think is effective, is definitely not
self-explanatory.
 1

INTRODUCTION

.. Our Commitment to Individualism and Our Problems with It

1.1.1 Thinking for Oneself. In this short chapter, I will survey the major
issues that this book will address – plus some additional issues in social
philosophy that Hegel analyzes in his Philosophy of Right but that I won’t
have room to discuss in this book – in order to draw attention to Hegel’s
commitment to modern “individualism” as an indispensable point of
departure, containing truths that must not be abandoned, though they
must certainly be interpreted in ways that go beyond initial schematic
or (as Hegel would put it) “abstract” formulations.
We tend to think that a person’s decisions about what to believe
should be based on her own thinking, rather than being a result of
just taking things on authority. The idea of thinking for oneself is a
major ingredient in the ideal of individual freedom. However, when
we attempt to think objectively about the world as a whole, including
ourselves as parts of that world, we may find reasons to wonder whether
the idea of thinking for oneself is compatible with what we seem to
learn about ourselves as parts of the world. Representatives of empiri-
cal sciences such as biology and psychology regularly tell us that there
is no such thing as freedom. Even philosophers for whom freedom
is an absolutely central concern, such as Kant, despair of explaining
how it could be compatible with a scientific view of reality. Nor is this
skepticism or despair about freedom limited to thinkers who are preoc-
cupied with empirical science. Thinkers in the Continental European
philosophical tradition that derives from Nietzsche and Heidegger of-
ten associate freedom with the modern “problem of the subject,” and
almost as often suggest that the only way to solve that problem is to

1
2 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

abandon the notion of the “subject” (and the notion of freedom along
with it).1

1.1.2 Theoretical Thinking for Oneself. Even assuming that a person can
successfully think for herself, do we have any reason to think that such
thinking can give her access to reality? In his Meditations, Descartes
made it his project to start from scratch, taking nothing on authority,
and arriving (he hoped) at knowledge of God and knowledge of the
physical world, but his arguments for God’s existence – which are indis-
pensable to his later arguments for his knowledge of the physical world,
as well – were attacked effectively by later philosophers such as Kant.
Philosophers such as David Hume, who tried to dispense with God,
wound up in considerable doubt about whether they could know the
physical world, either. It began to look as though a self-thinker might
not ever be able to get beyond knowledge of herself to knowledge of
anything else.

1.1.3 Practical Thinking for Oneself. In the realm of practical thinking,

we tend to think that a person has good reason to seek to meet her
own needs, satisfy her own desires, and defend her own rights. Like
thinking for oneself in deciding what to believe, concerning oneself
with one’s own needs, desires, and rights is part of living one’s own life –
part of taking oneself seriously. These are the things, it seems, that one
has immediate reason to seek. However, if what I have immediate reason
to seek is to meet my own needs, satisfy my own desires, and defend my
own rights, what reason (if any) do I have to help others to meet their
needs or satisfy their desires, and what reason do I have to respect
their rights? Of course, to the extent that helping others or respecting
their rights increases the probability that my own needs (and so on)
will be met, the case is no different from the initial one. Likewise, if I
happen to want to help others or to respect their rights.2 But what if,
in a particular case, helping others or respecting their rights will not

1 An argument along these lines that has been influential in the last couple of decades is
Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979). Rorty claims to find similar conclusions in the writings of John Dewey and Ludwig
Wittgenstein, as well as in Heidegger.
2 Thus, to act on one’s own desires is not necessarily to be selfish, since some of those
desires may be desires that the needs or desires of other people should be satisfied. But
of course it may be the case that one does not desire these things; and then if one is
guided only by one’s own desires, the result will be selfishness.
 introduction 3

increase the probability that my own needs (and so on) will be met –
and I don’t happen to want to help them or to respect their rights?
What if, in a particular case (and taking reasonable calculations of all
long-term consequences, and their probabilities, into account), theft,
fraud, or coercion seem likely to serve my needs and satisfy my desires
better than helping others or respecting their rights will?
This is the issue of the relationship between “rational egoism” and
ethics, which philosophers since Plato have tried, in various ways, to
address. None of their attempts is widely agreed to be successful or even
promising, though each has its advocates. In Chapter 2, I will canvass
several of these attempts (Plato, Thomas Hobbes and David Gauthier,
and Kant) and I will give reasons for thinking that none of them is fully
successful.

1.1.4 Social Affiliation. Then there is the issue of the relation between
individuality, on the one hand, and common needs and social relation-
ships, on the other. Even assuming that theft, fraud, and coercion are
(for whatever reason) out of the picture: If each person seeks, initially,
to meet her own needs, and so on, it looks as though interactions be-
tween people are likely to take the form of bargaining over possible
exchanges between them, in which each seeks maximum need or de-
sire satisfaction or the maximum success of her freely chosen life-plan.
Then several questions arise: (1) What about the value of welfare, which
it seems may sometimes need to be purchased at the cost of some re-
duction in freedom (for example, of freedom of contract, or of the
freedom to dispose of one’s own property as one wishes)? And (2) what
about the value of participating in non-self-centered relationships such
as love, family, friendship, or fellow-citizenship, as these are (one might
say) “traditionally” conceived? At first glance anyway, it looks as though
a society of “self-actualizing” individuals – who live their own lives, think
for themselves, seek to meet their own needs, and so forth – may not be
able to ensure (except by compromising their guiding ideal) that their
unlucky members don’t sometimes just fall by the wayside. This is the
issue that has set libertarians, who present themselves as the advocates
of individual freedom, against welfarists and socialists for a century and
a half now. And it also looks as though a member of such a society may
not be able to participate in relationships such as love, family, friend-
ship, and fellow citizenship, because her point of departure, in thinking
about her relations with other people, will always be herself – her own
life, her own needs, and so on – so that the closest she will be able to
4 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

get to other people will be negotiating about trade-offs between their

self-centered concerns and her own (and about how the rights of each
will be respected). The suggestion that the individual may need or desire
to have non-self-centered relationships just underlines the issue: How
can she arrive at such relationships by negotiating with others about how
everybody’s needs (and rights) – for these things among others – will
be satisfied? For negotiation itself seems to involve a self-centered ap-
proach to one’s life. Something like this issue has been on the minds
of romantic critics of Enlightenment individualism from the first re-
action against the French Revolution down to present-day “communi-
tarianism.”3 And finally (3), will a society of self-actualizing individuals
support a functioning democracy? Can we expect people who pursue
their private interests in the manner of the so-called “liberty of the mod-
erns” also to be active citizens, concerned with the public interest, in
the manner of the republican tradition (the “liberty of the ancients”)?

1.1.5 Universal or Theological Affiliation. Finally, there is the related issue

of the affiliation with reality as a whole, and the resulting sense of mean-
ing, value, and identity, that a person can find in a relationship to God.
Can a person avail herself of these, while at the same time being reason-
ably skeptical – as the ideal of thinking for oneself seems to require –
about the motives and the claims of purveyors of purported divine
revelation and comfort? Does the ideal of thinking for oneself (and
thus preserving, at least, one’s freedom), together with reasonable as-
sumptions about knowledge, lead to the conclusion that one can’t have
knowledge about God – knowledge that could free one from debili-
tating kinds of skepticism – and that one must simply choose between
debilitating skepticism, on the one hand, and blind (and, to that extent,
unfree) “faith,” on the other? Would the ideal of thinking for oneself
entail rejecting such a God’s love, in any case, on the grounds that one
should stand (like Lucifer) on “one’s own two feet”? Is Sigmund Freud
right in his view that religion is essentially a form of psychic infantilism,
so that a true adult will have nothing to do with it?4

3 Early critics of the Enlightenment who had some thoughts along these lines include
Johann Gottfried Herder, Edmund Burke, Novalis (Friedrich Hardenberg), Friedrich
Schlegel, and Joseph de Maistre. Present-day “communitarians” who have expressed sim-
ilar thoughts include Robert Bellah, Amitai Etzioni, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel,
and Charles Taylor.
4 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Norton,
1961), pp. 20, 21, 22. Freud gives a memorable brief account of the view opposed to his
 introduction 5

.. Hegel Endorses Individualism – as a Point of Departure

1.2.1 Self-Determination. Hegel was well aware of the challenge to hu-
man freedom that seems to be presented by the empirical sciences. He
was so concerned about the apparent flimsiness of Kant’s defense of
freedom that in an early phase of his own thinking, he sympathized
with F. W. J. Schelling’s complaints, against Kant, that Kant underes-
timated the significance of nature. However, the point of departure
of Hegel’s mature philosophical system, in the Science of Logic and the
Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, is the concept of a determinate be-
ing, the “something” (Etwas), which is what it is by virtue of itself rather
than by virtue of its relations to other somethings: that is, the point of
departure is self-determination.5 Hegel finds major problems with this
point of departure, problems that are summed up in his concept of
“negation,” or being what one is by virtue of one’s relations to others;
and those problems propel the unfolding of his philosophical system.
Some of the things that he says in the course of that unfolding, such as
that “what is rational, is actual, and what is actual is rational” (EG §6),
may raise questions about whether Hegel does in fact adhere to the
idea of freedom as thinking for oneself, in the sense of being free to
criticize the actual world. But it’s clear, at least in his point of depar-
ture, that Hegel could not give self-determination a more central role
than he does; so we will have to see how this thought unfolds, in his
system, and what the doctrines that appear to conflict with it actually
mean.

1.2.2 Not Dogmatism. In regard to knowledge of reality, one of Hegel’s

earliest publications was a discussion of the skepticism of his day – “On
the Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy” (1802) (TWA 2:213–
272/Skep) – in which he argues, not (initially) that this skepticism
can be overcome, but that it doesn’t go far enough! So he can’t be ac-
cused of telling people merely to believe whatever the people around

own – the view according to which there is an affiliation with reality as a whole, and a
resulting sense of meaning, value, and identity, that is the root experience of religion
and that naturalistic atheism may or may not be able to appreciate and enjoy – in his
discussion in Chapter 1 (pp. 10–21) of the “‘oceanic’ feeling” that was described for him
by his friend, Romain Rolland.
5 Actually, the Logic’s point of departure is in the concept of “being,” as such. Determinate
being, and the “something” that is what it is by virtue of itself (has “reality” [Realität]
and “being-within-self” [Insichsein]), are specifications of what is supposed to be implicit
in being, as such. Details on this are given in Chapter 3.
6 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

them believe. I will show in Chapter 3 how Hegel’s own conception of

knowledge and reality, in the Logic, is based upon and supersedes –
preserves while cancelling or correcting – this intensified skepticism.
Contrary, then, to the impression that one might get from Hegel’s
German-professorial manner, he is not a dogmatist; instead, he takes
the ideal of thinking for oneself at least as seriously as any other leading
modern philosopher.

1.2.3 Ethics Based on Freedom. Like Kant, Hegel approaches ethics, and
the issue of egoism and self-interest, by way of the idea of the self and
the idea of being oneself or governing oneself – which he usually refers
to as “freedom.” He assumes that an organism that is capable of being
itself or governing itself cannot “gain” anything that would compensate
it for a failure to do that. The key element in being oneself or governing
oneself, as Hegel analyzes it in the introduction to the Philosophy of Right
(§§5 and 11–21), is stepping back from whatever inclinations, desires,
or drives one may experience, and asking whether acting on them would
fit into the big picture of a life that makes sense as a whole.6 Simply to act
on one’s desires, as one happens to experience them, is to be governed
by something that has nothing to do with a self, as such, but derives –
through non-rational, causal processes – from whatever environment
and biological heritage one happens to have been born into. To be
oneself, on the other hand, is to examine these “givens” from the higher
point of view of a life that makes sense as a whole, and to accept or
reject them on that basis. This idea of being effectively self-governed,
rather than being governed by what is other than oneself, was what Kant
formulated with his contrast between the “hypothetical imperatives” of
desire-satisfaction, on the one hand, and the “categorical imperative,”
on the other hand, whose authority is based not on any felt desire,

6 This idea is expressed in PR §5, in which Hegel describes “the element of pure indeter-
minacy or of the ‘I’’s pure reflection into itself, in which every limitation, every content,
whether present immediately through nature, through needs, desires, and drives, or given
and determined in some other way, is dissolved; this is the limitless infinity of absolute ab-
straction or universality, the pure thinking of oneself.” For a more colloquial description,
see PR §11A (emphasis added): “The human being, as wholly indeterminate, stands above
his drives and can determine and posit them as his own. The drive is part of nature, but
to posit it in this ‘I’ depends upon my will, which therefore cannot appeal to the fact
that the drive is grounded in nature”; and PR §14: “‘I’ is the possibility of determining
myself to this or to something else, of choosing between these determinations [namely,
“its various drives”] which the ‘I’ must in this respect regard as external.”
 introduction 7

as such, but on thought, which goes beyond desire and thus makes
it possible for the agent to have an effective self (whose dictates Kant
identified with those of morality). Declaring that “knowledge of the will
first gained a firm foundation and point of departure in the philosophy
of Kant, through the thought of its infinite autonomy” (PR §135R),
Hegel unambiguously endorses this Kantian conception of freedom as
creating a self that can govern itself.
Here again, Hegel will have a great deal to say about the way in which
this sort of “freedom” needs to be articulated, concretely. That is the
subject of the entire Philosophy of Right, as well as of the preparatory
argument presented in the Science of Logic and the Philosophy of Spirit.
But by taking this conception as his point of departure, Hegel makes it
clear that – as it is for modern individualism in general, and certainly
in its Kantian form – thinking for and being oneself is, in his view, not
something to be rejected, but something the “truth” of which must be
preserved throughout the subsequent development of his philosophical
system.

1.2.4 Self-Determination and Social Affiliation. Turning to the issue of

the relationship between individuality, on the one hand, and common
needs and social relationships, on the other: The first topics that Hegel
takes up, in elaborating the concrete implications of “freedom” in the
Philosophy of Right, are property and contract. It is clear to him that ex-
change, and the ownership that it presupposes, are primary features of
a world in which people are free. Later he tells us that one of the major
domains of ethical life, “civil society,” is intended, as a system, to allow
“private persons who have their own interest as their end” (PR §187)
to go about their business. That is, the mature Hegel – who has not
studied Adam Smith and the other political economists for nothing – is
very aware of the central role, in developed societies, of bargaining and
exchange, and thus of contract, and of individuals who act (in certain
contexts, at least) in “self-centered” ways. Once again, that central role
is far from being his last word on the subject of social life. But it is
something that he endorses just as clearly as he does each of the other
individualist principles that I have mentioned. So Hegel is going to have
to show us how the apparently non-“individualist” social institutions that
he will also endorse – in particular, the family, public welfare-promoting
institutions, and the state – are consistent with the germ of truth in this
idea of the “self-centered,” contracting individual: how love, family,
8 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

friendship, welfare, fellow citizenship, and indeed active citizenship

itself (the “liberty of the ancients”) can be reconciled with modern
individualism.7

1.2.5 Self-Determination and Universal Affiliation. Finally, regarding the

question of the affiliation with reality as a whole, and the resulting sense
of meaning, value, and identity, that a person may be able to find in a
relationship to God: Hegel’s discussion of God, and God’s relation to
the world, is identical with his discussion of freedom. This has led more
than one commentator to suppose that for Hegel, only God is free, and
we finite human beings are only “vehicles” for this freedom that actually
belongs to God, and not to us. However, as I said earlier (1.2.1), Hegel
begins his system not with God, but with self-determination. God (as
“Absolute Spirit”) is the system’s final concept, not its starting point.
Hegel’s discussion, from its beginning, is aimed at finding out what it
would be for something – initially, a finite thing – to belong to itself.
He does indeed conclude that belonging to oneself (being self-
determining) necessarily involves going beyond one’s finite character-
istics, and he calls the result of that going-beyond “infinite” and divine.
But he also says that this infinite or divine thing is not “a power existing
outside” the finite (WL 5: 160/GW 21:133,39–1/145–146); rather, it is the
finite’s going beyond itself. Thus, there is reason to think that he takes
very seriously his starting point, in the idea of something that is self-
determining: that he does not regard us merely as “vehicles” for some-
thing that is other than us, but rather as having a very intimate relation-
ship with the infinite or the divine. He certainly doesn’t assert that God
simply is us, finite humans. But neither does he assert that God is some-
thing simply other than us (“a power existing outside”). However, exactly,
it is to be understood (on which, see Chapters 3–6, and 3.22 in particu-
lar), this intimate relationship is where Hegel thinks we find the possibil-
ity of an affiliation with reality as a whole that is not the abandonment,
but rather the full realization, of adult thinking-for-oneself. Since he
presents this relationship and this possibility as subjects of (philosoph-
ical) knowledge, rather than of mere (individual) “faith,” his claims go
well beyond what can be found in most modern philosophers – though

7 See 6.10. I analyze some of these issues in Hegel’s social philosophy in more detail in
“Hegel on ‘Ethical Life’ and Social Criticism,” Journal of Philosophical Research 26 (2001):
571–591, and “How Hegel Reconciles Private Freedom and Citizenship,” Journal of Political
Philosophy 7 (1999): 419–433.
 introduction 9

not (as it happens) beyond what pre-modern philosophers, such as

Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas, thought that they could of-
fer. The novelty of Hegel’s claims, in this area, is simply that the route
by which he arrives at them starts, as I have been saying, with a full
and explicit endorsement of the modern emphasis on individuality and
thinking for oneself.8

8 I don’t mean this remark to imply that individuality and the individual’s thinking for
herself were less fundamental concerns for Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas than they are
for modern philosophers. I think they were probably just as fundamental for these
pre-modern thinkers (see, for example, 2.6). But modern philosophers, starting with
Descartes, seem to make more of a fuss about these matters than their predecessors did;
and this sometimes leads commentators on the history of philosophy to suppose that
pre-modern thinkers were less concerned about them than modern ones are.
 2

NATURALISM, PLATO, KANT, AND HEGEL

ON REASON, FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY,
ETHICS, AND GOD

In this chapter, I turn to a more detailed exposition of how Hegel,

and several other major thinkers including the “naturalists” or
“empiricists” – Thomas Hobbes and David Hume and their successors –
and Plato and Kant, develop the idea of the individual who thinks for
herself and is responsible for her actions. What does this thinking for
oneself involve, in practice? Do we have reason to regard it as something
that can really happen, so that it is truly appropriate to hold people re-
sponsible – to praise them or blame them – for their actions? Would
the individual’s thinking for herself reduce or increase the likelihood
that she would treat other individuals in a way that is in keeping with
morality or ethics? And how would a person who thinks for herself re-
late to “God”? Should she reject the idea of God, as someone whose
existence is unproven and who (if real) would interfere with her think-
ing for herself, or is there a conception of God that is consistent with,
and even reinforces, the idea of individual freedom and thinking for
oneself – and whose existence might even be provable?

.. Kant and Hegel on the Will

In 1.2.2, I sketched Hegel’s conception of an individual’s practical free-
dom, which depends on her stepping back from whatever inclinations,
desires, or drives she may experience, and asking whether acting on
them would fit into the big picture of a life that makes sense as a whole.1 I

1 This idea is expressed in PR §5, in which Hegel describes “the element of pure inde-
terminacy or of the ‘I’’s pure reflection into itself, in which every limitation, every con-
tent, whether present immediately through nature, through needs, desires, and drives,
or given and determined in some other way, is dissolved; this is the limitless infinity of

10
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 11

pointed out how this point of departure seems strikingly individualistic:

how it reflects the idea that one should think for oneself, rather than al-
lowing any authority, or any external chain of causes (such as the chain
of causes that produced one’s desires, or the chain of causes that pro-
duced one’s society, and its influence on oneself), to determine what
one will do. Hegel regards the individual’s freedom as the one thing
that she cannot rationally consider giving up in exchange for anything
else that she herself might enjoy.2
How can an individual act in a way that is not determined by her
desires? She can consider whether it makes sense, all things considered,
to act on the desires that she feels, or whether her life would make more
sense if she formed a different desire or desires. No doubt it may take
some time to cultivate, in oneself, desires that are different from the
ones that one feels at the moment. But it seems that it can be done.
We can cultivate new desires by putting ourselves in situations that will
inspire new kinds of awareness, or by practicing behavior that, when it
becomes habitual, produces corresponding new desires. If I find myself
wanting to strangle my boss, I can seek out situations in which I can
get to know her good qualities, and to sympathize with the difficult ex-
periences through which she acquired her bad qualities, thus creating
some desire to express that sympathy in my actions; and in general I
can intentionally practice restraining myself from acting in ways that ex-
press my anger physically, thus acquiring or strengthening a habit and
a desire to act in accordance with that habit (as part of my habitual

absolute abstraction or universality, the pure thinking of oneself.” Note that I said in the text
that an individual’s practical freedom depends on this abstraction; it has other necessary
ingredients as well, which we will come to. See note 14 to Chapter 1 for more detailed
quotations.
2 She can consider giving up her life – to be able to consider giving up one’s life is itself part
of one’s freedom (PR §5A). But to consider handing over control of her life to other people
or to her desires or her environment is to consider abdicating her freedom, ceasing to
function as a free agent while she still possesses the capacity to function in that way. In PhG
§189 Hegel describes self-consciousness coming to the realization that “life is as essential
to it as pure self-consciousness” – that “staking one’s life” (§187) in order to win freedom
is not sufficient; one must also live, in order to exercise that freedom in the world. So (we
can infer) it can make sense to accept external constraints, in order to preserve one’s life –
but only in the interest of living free, in the long run. This is not to say that it could not
be rational to accept one’s own death if that might help, for example, to secure the free
living of others. In any case, it is clear that “individualism” in the sense that we have
been understanding it, as based on the idea of thinking for oneself, prohibits abdicating
freedom as Hegel understands it, since that freedom is simply a systematic attempt to
think for oneself.
12 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“sense of myself”). Both of these intentionally acquired desires –

the desire to express my new-found sympathy, and the desire to act
in accordance with my habit of non-violence – will tend to counteract
my desire, in certain circumstances, to strangle my boss.
A critic might suggest that in acquiring these desires I would simply
be acting on a (second-order) desire to have or to act on a different
(first-order) desire, so that it is not really possible for me to act in a
way that is not determined by desires of some kind.3 Explaining action
always in terms of desires may seem more consistent with a naturalistic
view of humans, whereas explaining it, instead, as sometimes resulting
from insight into what would make better sense of one’s life may seem
more consistent with the first-person point of view – with our personal
experience of what we think of as learning, acquiring insight, and acting
on it. “Naturalism” often claims to focus on where the real “oomph” in
human action comes from – namely, desires, passion, and so on – and
accuses Kant’s and Hegel’s notion that we can and should step back
from desires and evaluate them from a “higher” point of view (the
point of view of the Categorical Imperative, or the point of view of
Hegelian “universality”) of depriving action of the “oomph” that alone
motivates it. David Hume wrote that “reason is and ought to be the
slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than
to serve and obey them,” and Bernard Williams argued that genuine
reasons are all “internal” to the agent for whom they are supposed to
be reasons: that a person whose “subjective motivational set” contains
no desire, or “disposition of evaluation, pattern of emotional reaction,
personal loyalty, or commitment” that could lead him to ‘φ,’ has no
reason to ‘φ,’ and there is no reason for him to ‘φ.’4 T. M. Scanlon replies
that “If I believe that I would have reason to ‘φ’ in circumstances C”
(and that this reason is not a function of any desire or disposition that I
feel or possess, but rather simply of the sort of action that’s appropriate in
circumstances C), “and that Jones’s situation is no different from mine

3 The importance of “second-order” desires was emphasized by Harry Frankfurt in his

influential paper, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy
68 (1971): 5–20, reprinted in his The Importance of What We Care About. Philosophical Essays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 11–25.
4 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1978), p. 415; Bernard Williams, “Internal and External Reasons,” in his Moral
Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), combining pp. 101, 102, and 105
(quote).
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 13

in relevant respects, then the universality of reason judgments forces

me to the conclusion that this reason counts in favor of ‘φ’-ing in his
case as well” – so that I must believe that there is indeed a reason for
Jones to ‘φ,’ regardless of whether he has in his “subjective motivational
set” anything that could lead him to ‘φ’ in circumstances C.5
Here again there seems to be a gap between what is suggested by one
point of view (namely, Williams’s third-person contemplation of what
reasons someone other than himself “has”) and what is suggested by
another point of view (namely, Scanlon’s first-person contemplation of
what it means for him to make the judgment that he himself has reason
to do something). The third-person point of view suggests that all of
one’s reasons depend on one’s “subjective motivational set”; the first-
person point of view suggests that they don’t.6 Although Williams makes
it clear that he is not primarily concerned with the explanation of peo-
ple’s actions (which presumably is primarily a third-person exercise),
but rather with what it is rational for people to do, he doesn’t consider
the question of whether one could maintain his (Williams’s) rejection
of “external reasons” in regard to the fully first-person question of one’s
judgments about what one has reason, oneself, to do.
Kant was so concerned about the apparent contrast between the
point of view of explanation and the point of view of first-person
decision-making that he sometimes postulated a separate “world” for
each of them: the “phenomenal” world for the third-person point of

5 T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1998), p. 372. Scanlon gives a detailed critique, in his Chapter 1, of the theory that
the ultimate reasons for action must be desires. This theory has also been criticized in
recent Anglo-American philosophy by (among others) Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of
Altruism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), Chapter 5; Christine Korsgaard,
“Skepticism About Practical Reason,” Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986): 5–25; Elizabeth
Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993),
ch. 6; and G. F. Schueler, Desire: Its Role in Practical Reason and the Explanation of Action
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
6 I don’t mean to suggest that this particular allocation of “first-person” and”third-person”
status is the only one that could fit the disagreement in any way. The naturalist could claim
to be describing her own “first-person” situation (“I have no reason to φ if my subjec-
tive motivational set doesn’t move me to do so”), and could accuse her critic of speaking
from a “third-person” point of view insofar as the critic wants all cases to be subject to
the same rule. But describing the disagreement in that way would overlook the fact that
Scanlon is describing a consequence of making a judgment about what one should do,
oneself, whereas Williams, in describing what is involved in judging that someone else
has a reason to do something, seems not to address all of the implications of the kind of
first-person judgment that Scanlon discusses.
14 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

view, in which actions are explained by inclinations, and the “noumenal”

world for the first-person point of view, in which actions are decided by
rational thought. Skeptics naturally wonder what the relation is between
these two worlds, and how one could arrive at knowledge of the reality
of either of them, from within the other one. Why should a scientist,
whose normal domain of knowledge is the “phenomenal,” third-person
world, view the “noumenal,” first-person world as, in any sense, real? In
his more guarded moments, Kant puts his idea in terms of two “stand-
points” rather than two “worlds,” but a similar problem presents itself
even for this formulation. Why should the occupant of one standpoint
regard the contents of the other standpoint as real? How should we
understand the relation between the two “standpoints,” and can such
understanding, itself, qualify as “knowledge”? Hegel’s account of the
relation between freedom and nature, which I will examine in detail
in the next four chapters, argues that when we think carefully about
what we can and should mean by “reality,” we find that it requires a sys-
tematic combination of both points of view – the naturalistic or “finite”
one and the first-person or “infinite” one – and that it will not allow
us to promote one of them as more fundamental or more true than
the other. (This systematic combination is first articulated, in Hegel’s
Logic, as “negativity” and “true infinity,” which I explain in Chapter 3,
and later as the “Idea” and “Spirit,” which I explain in Chapters 5 and 6.)
If Hegel’s argument is a sound one, then evidently we can have knowl-
edge of the systematic relationship between the two points of view, so
the skepticism to which Kant’s inadequately explained dualism is vul-
nerable can in fact be overcome by Hegel’s revised version of Kant’s
view.
In the Introduction to his Philosophy of Right, Hegel gives a brief ar-
gument against taking human action to be, in every case and entirely,
a response to desire as such. This argument isn’t intended to address
the broad skeptical questions about the relation between nature and
freedom, and third-person and first-person points of view, that Hegel
addresses in his Logic, but it is a revealing argument, nevertheless. The
argument is that I seem to seek a standard by which to assess my desires
(PR §§ 17–18), that finding such a standard would involve systematizing
my desires in some rational way (§19), “purifying” and “forming” them
into a life that makes sense as a whole (§§19 and 20), and that the search
for such a standard or rational system or life that makes sense as a whole
is not simply an effort to satisfy as many desires as possible (a “sum total
of satisfaction” [§20]); rather, it is an effort to bring something that
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 15

deserves to be called a will, and freedom, into existence (that is, it turns
out that “the will has . . . itself as infinite form, as its content, object, and
end” [§21]). For insofar as my actions are simply the results of prior
causal chains, originating in my heredity and environment and oper-
ating through my desires, without any integrating agency that seeks to
make coherent sense of the lot of them, it looks as though it is not
really I who am acting; “I” am just the accidental point of intersection
of these various causal chains. In such a case, there is no sense in speak-
ing of a “will”: What is going on is simply mechanical causation. If, on
the other hand, I think that I have a will, or would like to have a will,
then what I have – or would like to have – is something that integrates
these various causal inputs in a way in which they would not, by them-
selves, be integrated. That is, to have a will in the sense that Hegel has in
mind – one that “has itself as its content, object, and end” – is precisely to
have something that goes beyond what Williams calls the agent’s “sub-
jective motivational set,” perhaps in a way that’s similar to Scanlon’s
maker of first-person judgments about what she herself has reason
to do.
A defender of the naturalistic project of explaining all action in terms
of desire might respond to this argument of Hegel’s by suggesting that
if a human being can sometimes seek to have a “standard,” so as to
integrate her causal inputs in something like the way that Hegel de-
scribes in PR §§17–21, this simply reflects another, distinctive desire –
a desire to have such a standard, to integrate one’s inputs in this way.
The defender of naturalism would have to grant, as well – since this is
an essential aspect of the phenomenon in question – that this “desire”
is experienced as having an authority that other desires do not have,
so that in cases of conflict between it and possible desires (say) to act
in ways that are completely unconscious, scattered, and whimsical, it
is always clear to the agent which desire she should, in principle, put
first. A defense of the desire theory that took this line would concede
everything that Hegel is concerned about, since it would grant the re-
ality of the phenomenon that he is drawing attention to. The form of
the desire theory that conflicts with Hegel’s view, on the other hand, is
the normal one in which an agent experiences a variety of desires, no
one of which has authority (though it may have sheer strength) that
the others lack. In relation to that sort of theory, the phenomenon that
Hegel is pointing to does seem to constitute a genuine challenge, since
it purports to embody something – the authority of the rational system
that represents selfhood, as opposed to mere scatteredness – that is not
16 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

on the same logical level as the desires that that rational system seeks
to systematize.7
Another way to describe Hegel’s challenge is to say that he is asking,
Why should I regard any given desire as the final authority on what I
should do? To the extent that I do that, I am not stepping back from my
desires; I am not distinguishing myself from them. The project of hav-
ing a “standard,” of integrating one’s desires into a coherent picture,
is the project of existing as a functioning self distinct from one’s par-
ticular experienced desires. Against recent desire theories of the good,
Elizabeth Anderson writes:

Naturalists try to substitute for the question: do these facts merit this
attitude? the question: do these facts cause this attitude? I believe that
no matter how the facts are presented to a person however naturalisti-
cally constituted, she always has room to ask whether her resulting attitudes are
rational or merited or endorsable. She has no reason to give up evaluative
reasoning.8 [last emphasis added]

This is exactly Hegel’s point. To which he adds that only insofar as

one is interested in this latter question (the question of whether one’s
attitudes are rational or merited or endorsable) does one actualize
what Hegel calls a “will,” by being interested in whether one’s life really
does make sense as a whole (the question that constitutes the “absolute
abstraction or universality” that Hegel associates with the first moment
of the will [PR §5]).
For these reasons, then, Hegel’s premise in his ethical writings is
that we can step back from our desires (from second-order desires,
if we have them, as well as from first-order desires) and ask ourselves
which ones it would make the most sense to act on, and which it would
make the most sense to resist. It is a premise that corresponds closely
to what Kant had assumed in his writings on ethics, where he argued
that we judge ourselves, morally, against the standard of a “good will”
that seeks only to do what is right, regardless of what its feelings or
“inclinations” may be at the time. Kant, too, traced the importance of
this standard to the importance of being “free” in the sense of being

7 The eighteenth-century British philosopher and divine, Joseph Butler, distinguished be-
tween the “authority” of reasons and the “strength” of desires: Fifteen Sermons, ed. T. A.
Roberts (London, 1970), sermon II, paragraphs 13–17.
8 Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1993), p. 139.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 17

self-governing: “What else then can freedom of will be but autonomy –

that is, the property which will has of being a law to itself?”9 The ad-
mirable quality of the “good will,” as Kant conceives of it, is precisely
that it is fully self-governing in this way: that it is not governed by mere
feelings or inclinations, but by the self, itself. What is admirable is not
just that (as Kant is convinced) such a will can only act morally; even
more fundamentally, it is that such a will, by rising above her feel-
ings and inclinations, is fully a will: that through it, she is fully self-
governing. Hegel alludes to this agreement between his own approach
and Kant’s when he says, in the Philosophy of Right, that “knowledge
of the will first gained a firm foundation and point of departure in
the philosophy of Kant, through the thought of its infinite autonomy”
(§135R).
It’s worth mentioning, before we go on, that Hegel’s conviction that
knowledge of the will first gained a firm foundation and point of depar-
ture in Kant’s philosophy, through the thought of its infinite autonomy,
was not widely shared among the generation of German philosophers
that came to prominence after Hegel’s death. Arthur Schopenhauer,
for example, who expressed great sympathy with Kant’s dualism of phe-
nomena and things-in-themselves, nevertheless poured scorn on Kant’s
idea that autonomy (in the form of the Categorical Imperative) is the
fundamental principle of ethics.10 Friedrich Nietzsche likewise enter-
tained himself by making fun of Kant’s Categorical Imperative11 ; and
the twentieth century’s dominant skepticism about ethics in general
did not allow a sympathetic return to Kant and Hegel, on this issue,
until both existentialism and logical positivism had run their courses.12
Before elaborating further on Kant’s and Hegel’s idea, however, I must
note two forceful criticisms of Kant’s formulation of it that were regis-
tered, early on, by Hegel himself.

9 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Ak. 447.

10 See Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, trans. E. J. F. Payne (New York: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1965).
11 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1885), sections 5 and 187. Beneath his mock-
ery of Kant, Nietzsche acknowledges that Kant isn’t entirely foolish: “What is essential
and inestimable in every morality is that it constitutes a long compulsion,” which actually
yields a certain important kind of “freedom” (section 188, first two paragraphs). But he
doesn’t explore the meaning of Kant’s claim that morality’s compulsion is rational, or its
connection to being oneself.
12 For a few of the philosophers who have engaged in this sympathetic return to something
like Kant’s conception of rational autonomy in recent years, see note 5.
18 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

.. Is this “Freedom” Actually Slavery (for the “Inclinations”)?

In an unpublished essay written in the 1790s, entitled “The Spirit of
Christianity and Its Fate,” Hegel commented on Kant’s conception of
freedom as rational autonomy (which Kant took to be instantiated in
moral duty):

Between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules
church and state, the Voguls, and the Puritans, on the one hand, and the
man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the difference
is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is free, but
that the former have their lord outside themselves, while the latter carries
his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave. For the particular –
impulses, inclinations, pathological love, sensuous experience, or what-
ever else it is called – the universal is necessarily and always something
alien and objective. . . . One who wished to restore man’s humanity in its
entirety could not possibly have taken a course like this.13

The Tungus and the Voguls are Siberian tribes. All of the examples
that Hegel mentions here – with the exception of “the man who listens
to his own command of duty,” which is his own ironical addition –
are in fact taken from Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone
(1793).14 Kant suggests there that both the Tungus and the Voguls,
and the European prelate and the Puritans, are ruled by something
external to themselves, which they seek to appease; and Hegel suggests,
in his turn, that in Kant’s conception of rational autonomy there is
an opposition between reason and particular impulses, inclinations,
sensuous experiences, and so forth, which renders part of the person
alien to and a slave of the other part, so that – to that extent – the person
“is his own slave.”
Is this early critique of Kant’s idea of achieving freedom by judging
one’s inclinations from the point of view of a “higher standard” – which
is a critique that has been shared by many other readers of Kant, from
Friedrich Schiller to the present – also, in effect, a critique of Hegel’s

13 “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate” (written in 1798 or 1799), in Early Theological
Writings, trans. T. M. Knox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 211–212;
TWA 1:323–324 (emphasis added). The phrase, “pathological love” – meaning love as
a feeling – is taken from Kant, KprV, Ak. 83: “Love to God as inclination (pathological
love) is impossible. . . .”
14 R, Book IV, Part 2, section 3 (p. 164 in the T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson translation
[New York: Harper, 1960]).
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 19

own later endorsement of the search for a “standard” that reflects the
self’s freedom better than its desires do? Hegel did not conclude, in his
mature philosophy, that his early critique of Kant, on this point, had
been mistaken. What he did conclude is that there is a way of appealing
to a “higher standard” that doesn’t involve “enslaving” or rendering
“alien” what is lower than that standard. He gives his formula for this
revision of Kant’s conception of autonomy in PR §11:

The determinations of the difference which is posited within the will

by the self-determining Concept appear within the immediate will as an
immediately present content: these are the drives, desires, and inclinations
by which the will finds itself naturally determined. This content . . . does
indeed originate in the will’s rationality and is thus rational in itself; but
expressed in so immediate a form, it does not yet have the form of ratio-
nality.
(PR §11; emphasis altered)

It is only when the will has “itself as infinite form as its content, object,
and end” (PR §21) that it is rational (and thus free) not only “in itself” –
as its content of drives, desires, and inclinations is said to be, in the
block quote – but also “for itself” (PR §21). That is when the content of
drives, desires, and inclinations, which “originate in the will’s rationality,”
will receive the “form of rationality.” When a single “rationality” makes
a transition, in this way, from “in itself” to “for itself,” the resulting
“higher standard” emerges from what it governs, and thus is not alien to it,
and doesn’t “enslave” it.
But what is this emergence? In what sense could the “drives, desires
and inclinations . . . originate in the will’s rationality” (aus der Vernünftigkeit
des Willens herkommen), and what is the meaning of the contrast between
rationality “in itself” (which they are said to have) and rationality “for
itself,” or the “form of rationality” (which they are said to lack)? These
key questions are not answered in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, but only in
his Logic and his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, first of all in his
derivation of “true infinity” and the “Concept,” in the Logic, and finally
in his account of how nature becomes Spirit, in the Encyclopedia. The
essential message of all of these is that reason is not the polar opposite
of the drives, the inclinations, the senses, and nature, but rather some-
thing that represents the full realization of a need or a project – the
single “rationality” that Hegel refers to in our quotation from PR §11 –
that is already present in the drives, and so on, though only “in itself,”
20 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

or implicitly, and not yet “for itself,” or explicitly. How this can be, I
will explain in Chapters 3–6. My purpose in this introductory discus-
sion is simply to let the reader know that Hegel is intensely aware –
having made a big fuss about them in his youth – of the issues, about
what we might call “polar opposites,” that arise in connection with a
rationalism such as Kant’s, and although he does not intend to resolve
those issues by eliminating either “pole” (as the naturalists, for exam-
ple, eliminate the pole of the authority of reason), neither does he
intend to leave the polarity in its state of “alien”-ness and unresolved
antagonism. His entire philosophical system, including his famous “di-
alectic,” is intended to avoid the two unsatisfactory results that I have just
mentioned.

.. Is this “Freedom” Ethically Empty?

Hegel’s second forceful criticism of Kant’s understanding of autonomy
forms the context of his statement – to which I’ve been directing at-
tention – of his agreement with Kant’s general principle of autonomy (that
“knowledge of the will first gained a firm foundation and point of de-
parture in the philosophy of Kant, through the thought of its infinite
autonomy”):

However essential it may be to emphasize the pure and unconditional

self-determination of the will as the root of duty – for knowledge of the
will first gained a firm foundation and point of departure in the phi-
losophy of Kant, through the thought of its infinite autonomy . . . – to
cling on to a merely moral point of view without making the transition to
the concept of ethics reduces this gain to an empty formalism, and moral
science to an empty rhetoric of duty for duty’s sake. . . . It is impossible to
make the transition to the determination of particular duties from the
above determination of duty as absence of contradiction, as formal correspon-
dence with itself, which is no different from the specification of abstract
indeterminacy . . . On the contrary, it is possible to justify any wrong or im-
moral mode of action by this means. . . . The fact that no property is present
is in itself no more contradictory than is the non-existence of this or that
individual people, family, etc., or the complete absence of human life. But
if it is already established and presupposed that property and human life
should exist and be respected, then it is a contradiction to commit theft
or murder; a contradiction must be a contradiction with something, that
is, with a content which is already fundamentally present as an established
principle.
(PR § 135R)
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 21

Hegel here implies that Kant’s test of whether a person is acting au-
tonomously boils down to whether her will is or is not in “contradiction”
with itself. Though in this simple form this is probably not an accurate
account of how Kant understands the Categorical Imperative’s “univer-
sal law” test,15 Hegel’s passage nevertheless raises an important issue for
Kant and for the concept of autonomy: Is it possible to be autonomous
without concerning oneself about the autonomy of other people? That
is, is it possible to be autonomous without concerning oneself about
ethics? (Hegel’s term for Kant’s conception of ethics, and others that he
associates with it, is “morality” [Moralität], whereas his term for his own
conception is “ethics” [Sittlichkeit], but for our present purposes I am
using the two words interchangeably.) Kant, as is well known, maintains
that immoral autonomy is not a logical possibility; this is a major claim
of his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (see Ak. 447: “a free will
and a will under moral laws are one and the same”) and his Critique of
Practical Reason. Hegel evidently is questioning whether Kant has in fact
shown this to be the case.16 He is implying that for all that Kant has
shown, a person could be perfectly autonomous while showing no re-
spect for “property and human life,” and likewise, no doubt, for ethics in
general.
So here again, Hegel thinks that Kant has left a major issue about the
nature of practical individualism unresolved. Hegel doesn’t conclude
that Kant was wrong about the importance of autonomy, but he thinks
that crucial work remains to be done in order to show that autonomy
doesn’t have massively anti-social implications. Before I go into more
detail about this issue, I first want to address one more objection to
Kant’s conception of freedom as self-government, which is not an ob-
jection that Hegel raises but is one that is very often raised, and that
certainly needs to be addressed.

15 See Marcus G. Singer, Generalization in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961), pp. 251–253;
Honora Nell (O’Neill), Acting on Principle. An Essay on Kantian Ethics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1975), Chapter 5, “Applying the Categorical Imperative”;
Christine Korsgaard, “The Formula of Universal Law,” in her Creating the Kingdom of
Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 86 and 95. Hegel’s earliest
statement of the general criticism of Kant’s Categorical Imperative that I’ve quoted from
the Philosophy of Right was in his early (1802/1803) essay, Natural Law, trans. by T. M.
Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975)/TWA 2:434–530, at pp.
460–463.
16 This interpretation of Hegel’s “emptiness” charge is advanced, and the so-interpreted
charge is defended, by Allen W. Wood in his Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 161–167.
22 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

.. Is this “Going Beyond . . .” Really “Freedom”?

Though Kant and Hegel differ, as I’ve been saying, about whether to
interpret the relation between freedom and nature as a “polar” opposi-
tion and about how to demonstrate that freedom and ethics go together,
they both believe that freedom depends upon the capacity to go beyond
one’s felt inclinations, desires, and so on, and to seek a higher standard
to guide one’s actions. An objection that is often raised against their
view could be put as follows: “Freedom isn’t a capacity for a certain kind
of thinking; rather, freedom is simply the ability to act in a way that is not
determined by anything but oneself – to act in a way that isn’t caused by
the world outside oneself. Surely one couldn’t hold a person responsible
for an action that was caused by the state of the world before she was
born, and that, with sufficient knowledge of that state and of the laws of
nature, could have been predicted before she was born.” Kant himself
seems to be strongly influenced by this thought when he concludes that
freedom can’t function in the same world, or (at least) be understood
from the same standpoint, in which causation and nature function or
are understood. This thought – that freedom is essentially simply the
occurrence of acts of willing that are not caused by anything prior to
themselves – has been argued for by a number of philosophers, includ-
ing the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid and the
twentieth-century philosophers, C. A. Campbell, Roderick Chisholm,
and Peter Van Inwagen, who are commonly referred to as “libertarian”
or “voluntarist” theorists of freedom and responsibility.17
The voluntarist position certainly has some intuitive force. Kant
seems to concede its argument; Hegel, however, as I said in 2.2, goes to
considerable lengths to show that we don’t need to think of causation
and freedom as incompatible, polar opposites. I’ll lay out his argument
on this subject in Chapters 3–6. Here I want to address, initially, the
simple claim of voluntarism that the crucial requirement, for respon-
sibility, is that the action was not caused by anything other than the
agent. This claim raises the issue of what it is, positively, for an action
to be caused by the agent. It is presumably not enough that the action

17 Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man (Edinburgh, 1788); C. A. Campbell,
On Selfhood and Godhood (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 167–179; Roderick M.
Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the Self,” The Lindley Lecture, 1964, Department
of Philosophy, University of Kansas, reprinted in Gary Watson, ed., Free Will (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 24–35; Peter Van Inwagen, “The Incompatibility of
Free Will and Determinism,” Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 185–199, reprinted in Gary
Watson, ed., Free Will, pp. 46–58.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 23

wasn’t caused by something other than the agent; for that would leave
open the possibility that the action was purely random, not caused by
anything at all. Kant’s answer to this question, which Hegel agrees with,
is that the action is caused by the agent if the agent is capable of being
guided by a higher standard than her inclinations (by a standard that
is, as Kant says, “categorical”), and if nothing prevents this guidance
from being effective, in the particular case. Kant’s reason for saying
that this capability must be present and potentially effective is that if it
is absent, or prevented from operating, there is no point in saying that a
responsible “agent” is at work in the action. If uncaused “actions” simply
happen, inexplicably, there is no point in holding anyone responsible
for them, or in speaking of an “agent,” or of “actions,” at all. What is
present is simply these random, inexplicable events. If there is to be a
point in speaking of “responsibility,” “agent,” “actions,” and so forth, it
must be – Kant and Hegel say – because what produced the “actions”
was, in fact, something that is capable of evaluating actions, and in that
way of being at work and involved in them, rather than producing them
either randomly or automatically.
At this point, I must mention a third, competing view of responsibil-
ity, in addition to the voluntarist view (according to which responsibility
requires, primarily, the absence of a cause that is other than the agent
herself) and the Kant/Hegel view (according to which responsibility re-
quires the presence of something that’s capable of “evaluating” actions –
of being guided by a standard that’s higher than her inclinations). This
third view is advocated by the same “naturalists” whom I described as
defending the theory that actions are to be explained solely as result-
ing from desires. Leading representatives of this position are Thomas
Hobbes and David Hume, and what they say about responsibility is that
there must indeed be a point in saying that an “agent” is at work, in an
“action,” but that, contrary to Kant and Hegel, this point involves noth-
ing as fancy as a capacity for “going beyond” inclinations or desires, to
some supposedly “higher standard”; what it requires is simply that the
action was caused by characteristics of the agent, such as her generos-
ity, her greed, or her compassion, and not by some external coercing
force, such as a robber’s holding a gun to her head.18 If the action

18 See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 21, paragraphs 1–4, and David Hume, A Trea-
tise of Human Nature, Part III, sections 1 and 2, and Enquiries Concerning Human Under-
standing and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1902), pp. 80–103. An influential recent statement of substantially the
24 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

was caused by these characteristics of the agent, then the action isn’t
merely random or inexplicable, and it does make sense to speak of an
“agent,” and her “actions” – even if (contrary to voluntarism) these char-
acteristics of the agent may in turn have been caused by circumstances
that were outside the agent herself, such as the childhood environ-
ment that trained her in a certain way, or the evolutionary history that
produced her genes. This naturalistic view is commonly referred to as
“compatibilism,” because it defends (against voluntarism) the compat-
ibility of responsibility and natural causation. And it has the advantage,
against the Kant/Hegel view, that it requires only a very simple con-
ception of human beings and their practical functioning, according
to which humans, like other animals, act simply in order to satisfy de-
sires that they feel, and not in accordance with some supposedly higher
standard, the source of whose authority may seem – at least to non-
religious people – to be unclear. The naturalistic view seems to show
how it can make sense to speak of responsibility and agents and actions,
without appealing to the “higher” capacities that the Kant/Hegel view
appeals to.
However, the naturalistic view also has problems. The naturalist
grants that for some psychological traits, the explanation of their pres-
ence in the agent is simply outside of her. For traits of that kind – for
which (according to the theory) the agent is not responsible, because
her acquisition of the trait doesn’t reflect other traits that she already
had – one would like to know what it is that makes the agent responsible
for actions that are caused by this trait? It’s hard to know what the natu-
ralist can say at this point, except that the agent simply is this trait (and
others like it). But this doesn’t seem to be consistent with experience.
However greedy or compassionate I may be, and however unapologetic
I may be about my greed or my compassion, it seems unlikely that I
would agree that if I lost my greed or my compassion, I myself would no
longer be present, or that my presence would be “reduced” proportion-
ately to the weight of these traits in the basket of traits that constitutes
me.
Furthermore, many of the most difficult practical issues in determin-
ing responsibility have to do with deciding whether a person who has
certain psychological characteristics should, in fact, be held responsible

same position is A. J. Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity,” in his Philosophical Essays (London:
Macmillan, 1954), pp. 271–284, reprinted in Gary Watson, ed., Free Will (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1982), pp. 15–23.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 25

(and praised or blamed) for actions that result from those character-
istics. For example, kleptomania and schizophrenia are psychological
characteristics that give rise to actions for which the agent is often not
thought to be fully responsible. Why is it that the agent is responsi-
ble for actions that result from her greed or compassion, but not for
actions that result from her kleptomania or schizophrenia? Natural-
istic compatibilism doesn’t seem to offer a ready explanation for this
difference.19 Kant’s and Hegel’s approach, on the other hand, addresses
it directly. Greed and compassion are both traits that the agent might
be able to do something about, by efforts of the sort that I described
in 2.1 (self-training), if she evaluated them by reference to a “higher”
Kantian or Hegelian standard and concluded that they failed to meet
that standard – whereas kleptomania and schizophrenia don’t seem
to respond to this sort of treatment. That’s why we say that because
a person who is in the grip of schizophrenia “doesn’t understand the
difference between right and wrong,” and because although a person
who is in the grip of kleptomania may understand that difference, she
is unable to bring this understanding to bear on her actions (which
seem not to respond at all to what she thinks), neither of these peo-
ple is fully to blame for whatever she does in these circumstances. The
Kantian/Hegelian “higher standard” account explains the relevance of
what everyday discussions of responsibility refer to as “understanding
the difference between right and wrong,” whereas naturalistic compat-
ibilism, in its classical forms at least, simply doesn’t come to grips with
the issue.20
Nor does voluntarism address this issue. Kant’s and Hegel’s rational-
ist approach (“rationalist” because it ascribes to reason the ability to go
beyond desires or inclinations, in practical reasoning) is the only one of
the three approaches I’ve mentioned that does address it. Voluntarists
like to describe their theory as the only theory of “real freedom,” be-
cause it focusses on the most abstract characterization of freedom – a

19 A. J. Ayer, in the the paper cited in note 18, mentions kleptomania as a psychological
trait that produces actions for which we don’t hold the agent responsible, but he doesn’t
explain why our attitude toward it differs from our attitude toward greed or compassion,
in this way.
20 When Isaiah Berlin, following in the footsteps of Hobbes, Hume, and Bentham, advo-
cated “‘negative’ freedom” – “liberty from; absence of interference” – as against “the
‘positive’ conception of freedom as self-mastery” (“Two Concepts of Liberty,” in his
Four Essays on Liberty [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969], pp. 122, 127, 134), he
overlooked the fact that madmen aren’t free, so evidently some portion of rational
self-mastery is an essential ingredient in the freedom that we value.
26 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

characterization that many people are instinctively attracted to – which

describes it as the opposite of causation or “determinism.” By excluding
actions caused by anything other than the agent, voluntarism seems to
focus more sharply than naturalistic compatibilism does on the issue
of what makes an action the agent’s “own.” But since the Kant/Hegel
approach addresses the way we discriminate in practice between actions
for which people are responsible and actions for which they aren’t re-
sponsible, where we might say that the latter actions happen “through”
the agent, but only the former ones are really the agent’s “own actions,”
the Kant/Hegel approach very much addresses the issue of what makes
an action the agent’s “own,” and indeed it seems to address it with
greater subtlety and realism than the voluntaristic approach does. When
we appreciate this difference between voluntarism and the Kant/Hegel
approach, we might begin to wonder whether the primary issue, in re-
gard to responsibility, really is the question of whether there were causes
outside the agent that influenced her decision, or whether, on the con-
trary, the primary issue is whether the agent was able to go beyond her
feelings and inclinations so as to understand the difference between
right and wrong, good and bad.
If we conclude that Kant and Hegel are right about what the pri-
mary issue is, here, we will certainly still need to address the issue of
how or in what sense it is possible for a person to go beyond her feel-
ings and inclinations if she is still subject to causal influences from the
world outside her and before her birth. That is, the issue of the rela-
tion between the possible truth of natural “determinism,” on the one
hand, and responsibility, on the other, will still need to be addressed,
which is why both Kant and Hegel do address it, Kant by way of his
dualism of the noumenal world versus the phenomenal world, and
Hegel by means of his account of true infinity, the Concept, and the
nature/Spirit relationship. In Hegel’s case, the same undermining of
“polar opposition” by which he overcomes the “alienness” that he crit-
icized in Kant’s dualism of reason versus the inclinations (2.3) also
undermines the polar opposition of natural determinism and respon-
sibility. (I will explain all of this in Chapter 3.) But the initial reason
why Hegel is able to address the determinism/freedom issue – about
which voluntarism makes such a fuss – in a very different way from vol-
untarism, is precisely because Hegel shares with or derives from Kant
the view that the primary consideration, with regard to responsibility, is
not the presence or absence of external causal influences, as such, but
the agent’s possession of the capacity to go beyond her feelings and
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 27

inclinations so as to understand the difference between right and

wrong, good and bad.
The advantage that the Kant/Hegel approach seems to have over
both naturalistic compatibilism and voluntarism – namely, that it can
explain the agent’s “ownership” (of the actions for which she is respon-
sible) in a way that seems more subtle and realistic than either of the
other approaches – explains why, despite the Kant/Hegel approach’s
relative complexity and distance from some of our first thoughts about
responsibility, there is nevertheless a long tradition of theories of
human functioning and responsibility that resemble the Kant/Hegel
approach more than they resemble either naturalistic compatibilism
or voluntarism. Something like Kant’s and Hegel’s approach seems to
be implied by, for example, Plato’s account of practical reasoning and
the “soul,” in Republic, Book iv, and Aristotle’s account of practical rea-
soning in Nicomachean Ethics, Books i–iii; and something like it has also
been influential in recent decades among quite a few Anglo-American
philosophers who write about freedom and responsibility – though they
often tend to associate their thinking more with the model of Plato
than with those of Kant or Hegel, no doubt because Kant’s example
is rendered confusing by his simultaneous attraction to voluntarist in-
compatibilism (and as for Hegel’s example, it simply isn’t understood,
so hardly anyone cites it).21

.. Individualism and Ethics: Hobbes and Gauthier

I want to return now to the issue of the relationship between individu-
alism, or individual freedom, and ethics. Does caring about one’s own
freedom give one any reason to care about the freedom of other people,
to respect their rights, and perhaps even to aid them when they’re in
trouble? Kant and Hegel both think that the answer to this question is

21 For recent Anglo-American rationalist theorists of responsibility, see Gary Watson, “Free
Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 205–220, and Charles Taylor, “Responsibility for
Self,” in A. O. Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976), pp. 281–299 (both of these are reprinted in Gary Watson, ed., Free Will [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982]); Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990); and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and
Control. A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Watson identifies Plato as the main antecedent of his theory. On the rationalism about
responsibility that seems to be implied by Aristotle’s analysis of practical reasoning, see
T. H. Irwin, “Reason and Responsibility in Aristotle,” in A. O. Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s
Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 117–156.
28 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

yes, and they offer importantly different arguments for that conclusion.
Hegel’s argument for it will occupy us in Chapters 3, 5, and 6. Before
outlining and criticizing Kant’s argument, I first want to survey (as I did
in the previous section) two of the major alternative proposals, in regard
to this issue, that have been made in the history of Western philosophy,
so as to give us an idea of the “environment” of Kant’s and Hegel’s
thinking on this issue. Familiarity with the strategy and the weaknesses
of other proposed solutions can help us to appreciate the distinctive
character and the strengths (as well as, perhaps, weaknesses) of Kant’s
and Hegel’s approaches.
The first major proposal that I will consider is Thomas Hobbes’s,
whose basic assumptions still make up – in the form of what is now
called “rational choice theory” – one of the most influential conceptions
of how a rational individual would deal with other individuals. Closely
related to the “naturalism” about human functioning that I discussed
earlier, rational choice theory is probably the single most influential
conception, in the present-day social science, of human behavior. In his
Leviathan (1651), Hobbes describes the difficult situation of humans
in a “state of nature,” in which there is no order imposed on all of
them either by external force or by inner conscience, so that each must
always be afraid that others will use force to deprive her of anything
that has value. (Hobbes recognizes that some people will want to act
fairly towards others, but points out that one cannot assume that this
will be true of every individual one meets, so fear is always in order.)
Assuming that humans fear death and want consumable goods, Hobbes
argues that it will be rational for them to agree to obey a sovereign power
that will impose some sort of collective order, and thus reduce their fear
and protect their enjoyment of those goods. The question then arises, as
to whether it will be rational, for humans who have entered the rational
“covenant” to obey the sovereign power, to follow through and actually
do so – to obey the sovereign’s law even when (for example) it looks
as though they might profit, personally, by disobeying it? The person
who holds that covenant-breaking can be rational, Hobbes describes as a
“fool,” arguing that since someone who is caught breaking his covenant
may lose all the benefits of membership in society – may be expelled
into the wilderness, back into the “state of nature” – the possible loss
is too great to be justified by any possible gain (Leviathan, chapter 15,
§5). However, we who run similar risks of violent death every day when
we cross the street (the risk of being hit by a truck) or take a shower
(the risk of breaking our neck) may reasonably wonder whether it is
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 29

clearly irrational to run such risks, if the probability of the disaster is

small enough and the size and probability of the gain that we have in
view are large enough.
So Hobbes seems not to have shown that obeying the public author-
ity is always the best way to secure safety and other goods for oneself.
It is true, of course, that if there are many “fools,” who reason that they
can do better for themselves by breaking their covenants when it looks
as though their chances of getting away undetected and unpunished
are very high, then the public authority may not serve its purpose: Ev-
eryone, the “fools” included, may be just as unsafe as they were before.
If all are equally rational, and if all have only the sort of motives that
Hobbes says we can count on humans to have (the desires for safety
and for goods that they personally can consume), then the covenant
and public order may collapse. So the success of the “fools’” strategy,
in individual cases, is likely to depend upon most people’s either being
conscientious covenant-keepers or not being smart enough to see that
Hobbes’s argument for keeping one’s covenant is not cogent. In such
a situation, the “fool” will be what we nowadays call a “free rider”: one
who takes advantage of other people’s support of a public institution,
by enjoying its benefits without paying her share of the costs. Opportu-
nities for this sort of free riding seem to be present often enough that
the “fool’s” strategy can hardly be dismissed as, in general, an irrational
one.
Thus Hobbes’s argument for obeying a public authority that one has
helped to set up seems to be flawed. Recently, however, David Gauthier
has shown, based on premises similar to Hobbes’s, how it could be
rational to acquire a disposition to obey rules that one has agreed with
others to set up – provided that others are also likely to obey them –
rather than to take advantage of opportunities to secretly break the
rules, as the “fool” advocates.22 Gauthier points out that individuals who
acquire such dispositions may be able to participate in societies that are
more productive (of the goods that they value) than societies that are
composed of individuals who insist on making sure that their particular
actions produce the most good for themselves that they could produce.
For there will be less need for individuals to protect themselves against

22 “In Hobbes we find the true ancestor of the theory of morality that we shall present”
(David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], p. 10). For
a sampling and overview of contemporary “rational choice theory,” of which Gauthier’s
book is an instance, see Jon Elster, ed., Rational Choice (New York: New York University
Press, 1986).
30 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

being taken advantage of in a society where people are disposed not

to take advantage of one another, and the effort that would have gone
into such protection can then be invested in producing other goods.
And if the society, as a result, produces more of these other goods, the
individual is likely to do better than she could in a less-productive soci-
ety. In this way, Gauthier argues that individuals who have dispositions
to obey the rules, rather than making exceptions on their own behalf,
may do better, and that it can therefore be rational for them to acquire
such dispositions. Thus he seems to have answered Hobbes’s “fool.”
In doing so, however, he brings out a feature of the Hobbesian ap-
proach to practical reasoning that suggests that what it justifies may not
be “morality” as many of us understand that term. Gauthier intends to
demonstrate the rationality of morals, as the title of his book – Morals by
Agreement – suggests. Hobbes himself did not discuss morality as such;
rather than asking whether or not we should obey certain rules, he
asked whether or not we should obey a sovereign power. But Gauthier’s
approach is like Hobbes’s in the conception of practical reasoning that
it employs: It aims to show that the obedience that it considers (which
in this case happens to be obedience to agreed-upon rules) can be ra-
tional in that it produces, for each of us, more of what each of us values
than disobedience can produce.
In the course of spelling out the details of the bargaining process
by which individuals could arrive at the rules that they will agree on,
Gauthier (unlike Hobbes) considers the possibility that some partici-
pants in the process may be handicapped, in comparison with others.
The types of handicaps that he mentions are ideological or psycho-
logical factors, historical factors such as the community’s customs, and
differences in technological knowledge that enable some individuals
to employ superior firepower to coerce others (Morals by Agreement,
pp. 230–231). Any of these handicaps can cause an individual to ac-
cept a set of rules that are unfair to herself, but the best that she can
negotiate under the circumstances. In extreme cases, they can make
it unnecessary for others to enter into any agreement with her at all.
Gauthier mentions the case of the Spaniards who overcame the Indian
civilizations of the Americas, and who saw no need to enter into any
agreement with the Indians that would limit their power to exploit
them. He concludes that where there are differences in technology
such as those between the Spaniards and the Indians, his argument for
mutual agreement is inapplicable. “In reconciling reason and morals,”
he writes, “we do not claim that it is never rational for one person to
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 31

take advantage of another . . . Such a claim would be false. . . . Morals

arise in and from the rational agreement of equals” (p. 232; emphasis
added) – which the Spaniards and the Indians, with their differing levels
of technological knowledge, were not.
This conclusion, however, must make us question in what sense it
is morality that Gauthier’s argument has “reconciled with reason.” Is
the fact that a set of rules is agreed upon and obeyed by a group of
people, when disobedience in particular cases would sometimes benefit
individuals more than the obedience that they in fact exhibit, enough
to qualify those rules as “morals”? If there can be people who don’t
qualify for participation in such an agreement, because they lack (for
example) relevant technological knowledge, then the rules contained
in the agreement don’t appear to match the rules that we commonly
refer to as “moral,” because the latter rules are generally supposed to
protect the ignorant as well as the knowledgeable.
It is true that most leading moral theories have difficulty accounting
for some categories of obligation that common sense morality assumes
we have. For example, the Kantian theory has trouble making sense of
our feeling that we should not cause unnecessary pain to non-human
animals. But the kind of obligation that Gauthier’s theory fails to ac-
count for, being an obligation toward what may turn out to be quite a
large percentage of our fellow human beings, constitutes a particularly
blatant problem. If Gauthier’s argument is the best one that can be con-
structed on the basis of a conception of practical reasoning as aiming at
maximizing the satisfaction of the individual’s desires or preferences,
then it looks as though the kind of morals that most people usually
think they operate by cannot in fact be reconciled with that kind of
practical reasoning.

.. An Early Critic of Hobbes and Gauthier:

Plato on the Will and Justice
However, despite the current prestige of rational choice theory, it is
not the only conception of practical reasoning that has been taken seri-
ously in our philosophical tradition. There are others, and others that
have been thought to relate to morality in ways quite different from the
Hobbesian way. One of them was developed almost 2,000 years before
Hobbes by Plato, in his Republic, in direct response to the weakness of the
“rational choice” approach – a weakness that was exhibited by Glaucon
in his famous challenge to Socrates at the beginning of Republic,
32 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Book ii. Glaucon – speaking not for himself but for the sophists whom
he wants Socrates to refute – first sketches a “social contract” theory of
the origin of mutual restraint, in which people judge that they stand to
lose more by other people’s predatory behavior, in the state of nature,
than they stand to gain by their own, and so they “decide that it is prof-
itable to come to an agreement with each other neither to do injustice
nor to suffer it” (359a).23 Glaucon goes on to say, however, in the spirit
of Hobbes’s “fool,” that someone who had the power to do injustice
with impunity would be “mad” not to do it. He illustrates this claim with
the story of the shepherd, an ancestor of Gyges of Lydia, who found a
ring that made him invisible and thus enabled him to seduce the king’s
wife and make himself king. “Someone who didn’t want to do injus-
tice, given this sort of opportunity,” Glaucon goes on, “and who didn’t
touch other people’s property would be thought wretched and stupid
by everyone aware of the situation, though, of course they’d praise him
in public, deceiving each other for fear of suffering injustice” (360d).
Having shown in this way the great opportunities that can be open to
some who are willing to act unjustly, and the apparent irrationality of
refusing to do so, in favorable circumstances, Glaucon gives Socrates
a challenge resembling the one that the “fool” issues to Hobbes: show
that justice (in Hobbes’s case, keeping one’s covenant) is the best policy.
However, there is an important difference between the two chal-
lenges, a difference that reflects the fact that Glaucon assumes that
no response along the lines of the one that Hobbes attempts can do
the job. Rather than asking Socrates to show that just action will yield
the agent more goods other than justice itself – as Hobbes tries to show of
covenant-keeping – Glaucon asks Socrates to show that justice itself, the
quality of acting justly, is so valuable that it benefits the agent more than
any goods other than justice could benefit him. This may sound like an
even more difficult task than the one that Hobbes and Gauthier have
failed to accomplish, but Socrates had invited the request by suggesting
initially that this is the way he regards justice (357d), and this view of
his in fact provides the framework for the entire, very un-Hobbesian
theory of rationality and justice that he unfolds in the remainder of the
dialogue.
There are two kinds of reasons that Glaucon may have for assuming
that a “rational choice,” social contract approach cannot do the job that

23 Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992),

p. 34.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 33

needs to be done. One is the problem of would-be “free riders” such as

the “fool” – the problem that Gauthier addresses (and that is illustrated
so dramatically by the story of “Gyges’s ring”). Glaucon may see that an
argument for mutual agreement that can convince potential free riders
may have to do so at the expense of excluding from fair participation in
the agreement many of the people whom we thought justice or morality
was supposed to protect (as Gauthier’s argument in fact does exclude
them). The other reason Glaucon undoubtedly has is that an argument
that seeks to show that justice or morality can yield greater amounts of
goods (other than justice or morality itself) to the person who practices
it seems not to explain why people might value justice or morality for their
own sake, and why they might not just approve of, but admire, a person
who values them in that way, and acts accordingly. (Remember Kant’s
view that the “good will” is something that we find admirable.) These
features of justice as it is understood by many of Plato’s contemporaries
(though perhaps not by those who favor the social contract theory of
justice) are the ones that he focuses on as the keys to his own, contrasting
view of both rationality and justice.
Plato outlines that view in Book iv of the Republic and elaborates
on it in Books v–ix. For our present purposes, a brief sketch of Plato’s
view will be enough.24 Plato proceeds from an analysis of the human
“soul.” Though he concludes the dialogue with a story of rewards and
punishments in the underworld after death (the “myth of Er”) – and
he had presented famous arguments for the soul’s immortality in the
Phaedo – Plato makes no appeal whatever to immortality in the course of
his argument for justice in Republic, Books iv–ix. This argument is based
not on the soul’s possible immortality but rather on the complexity of
its functioning – on its “parts,” and their relationship to one another.
Plato argues that in view of the internal struggles that we observe in
human beings, we must conclude that their psychic functioning has at
least three distinct parts: the appetitive part, the rational part, and the
“spirited” (emotional) part. The appetites – drives and desires, we might
say – want what they want. Every human has many of them. Sometimes

24 For contrasting interpretations of Plato’s argument for justice in the Republic as a whole,
see T. H. Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory. The Early and Middle Dialogues (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977), Chapter 7 (Irwin gives a more elaborate account in his Plato’s
Ethics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], Chapters 12–18), and Richard Kraut,
“The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic,” in R. Kraut, ed., The Cambridge Companion to
Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 311–337. My interpretation
is more influenced by Irwin’s than by any other.
34 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

we experience an appetite that we think we should not satisfy, and

we may experience a struggle between the appetite and this thought.
The thought, and whatever influence it has, represents the operation
of the rational part (439b). The third part, the “spirited” part, steps
in when we become angry at our appetite for resisting the influence
of our reason – or angry at other people for acting in ways that we
consider unreasonable (439e–440d). Thus, the spirited part allies itself
with the rational part; but we can tell that it is distinct from the rational
part because sometimes it is hasty, rushing forward to insist on what it
considers reasonable, whereas the voice of reason itself is raising doubts
or objections that it isn’t immediately able to make heard because of
the passionateness of the spirited part (see 441b).
Now, what Plato says about these parts of the soul is that the soul,
and thus the person, is not well off unless all three are in harmony with
each other, that harmony being the situation in which the rational part
is deciding which appetites should be satisfied and which should not,
and the appetitive part is complying with the rational part’s decisions,
and the spirited part, likewise, is paying attention to the rational part,
rather than rushing out on its own. When this is the case, Plato says, the
person “binds together those parts . . . and from having been many things
he becomes entirely one, moderate and harmonious. Only then does he
act” (443de; emphasis added).
When Plato says that “only then does [the person] act” – only when
her three parts have reached a harmonious unity – he is pointing to
the same capacity for unity, in the self or the will, that Kant and Hegel
are concerned with, and that writers such as Hobbes and Gauthier do
not identify as an issue. Whether they should identify it as an issue is
a question I will come back to. First, however, let us close the circle of
Plato’s argument. What does all of this unity in the soul have to do with
justice?
The connection, Plato suggests, is transparent. Plato entitles the
soul’s internal harmony “justice” (this seems reasonable to him because
he has devoted Book iii and parts of Book ii and iv to describing a similar
harmony in the city, which he also calls “justice”), and it seems clear to
him that a person who has this inner “justice” cannot act unjustly in rela-
tion to other people. Plato’s reason for believing this is not merely that
he has given the internal and external phenomena the same name, but
rather that injustice must represent “a rebellion by some part against
the whole soul in order to rule it inappropriately,” so that “the tur-
moil and straying of these parts are injustice, licentiousness, cowardice,
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 35

ignorance, and, in a word, the whole of vice” (444b). Comparing the ap-
petitive part to a many-headed beast and the rational part to a “human
being within,” Plato writes that someone who maintains that injustice
profits a person “is simply saying that it is beneficial for him, first, to
feed the multiform beast well and make it strong, . . .; second, to starve
and weaken the human being within, so that he is dragged along wher-
ever either of the other two [parts] leads” (588e). In other words, Plato
suggests that someone who acts unjustly toward other people must be
acting under the influence of one or more appetites, uncontrolled by
her rational part, and thus not harmonious and unified but full of strife
and disunity.
It is because a person’s interest in acting justly towards other people
reflects, in this way, her inner harmony and unity, and because that
harmony and unity is (in Plato’s view) an admirable thing, to be valued
for its own sake, that Plato thinks he has shown how and why many
people are inclined to view justice as something valuable for its own
sake, and to view people who care about justice for its own sake as
admirable. What they care about, he thinks, is something that is higher
than the satisfaction of particular appetites, and that can be seen to
have a special value that transcends all such satisfactions. To see that
value and to be guided by it is to reach a higher level – the level of
“unity,” as I have been calling it – than a person who is guided merely
by appetites, as such, can attain.
Is Plato right in thinking that someone who acts unjustly toward
other people must be acting under the influence merely of appetites,
uncontrolled by her rational part? This view certainly seems plausible
in many particular cases. People who take advantage of other people
are often acting under the impetus of strong desires or passions, and in
ways that they might not approve of if they were able to reflect calmly
on whether it is really best for them to satisfy those desires or passions in
this case. But can we be sure that all injustice is necessarily like that? Are
we sure that it is not possible to pursue what most people would call an
unjust course of action – even a course of action that the agent herself
would call unjust – in a perfectly calm and dispassionate manner, as a
result of the fully rational judgment that she has more to gain from it
than from acting justly, in this case?
We can infer that Plato sees this weakness in the position that he
sketched in Book iv, because he goes on in subsequent books of the
dialogue to consider in more detail what the rationality of the “rational
part” consists in. If it is merely the ability to calculate how best to satisfy
36 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

desires that the agent happens to have, or the ability to choose a consis-
tent set of those desires to satisfy, so as to avoid conflict among actions
aimed at satisfying one desire and actions aimed at satisfying others,
there seems to be no reason to expect it to be incompatible with cal-
culating, dispassionate injustice toward others. If, on the other hand, it
revises the desires that it is given, or generates new desires of its own,
there might be reason to expect this to have more interesting implica-
tions. Plato’s analysis of knowledge, in the famous sections of Books vi
and vii that use the analogies of the sun, the line, and the cave, is di-
rected specifically at knowledge of the good, with the goal of explaining
how we can reasonably revise the conceptions of a good life that are
suggested by our desires as they are initially given, and work beyond
such simple accounts of the good as those that identify it with (say)
pleasure or knowledge, as such (505a–c) (accounts that Plato himself
appeared to be attracted to in earlier dialogues such the the Protagoras
and the Phaedo). Describing this in the terms that we used in connec-
tion with Kant and Hegel, we would have to say that Plato says that
knowledge of the good requires us to “go beyond” our initial desires
or our initial theories, towards a “higher standard.” In Book viii, Plato
describes a series of personalities – the timocratic man, the oligarchic
man, the democratic man, and the tyrannical man – who all exhibit
rationality of one kind or another. For one thing, each finds an inad-
equacy in the personality that precedes him in the series, which leads
him to formulate his substitute model personality. But none of the four
of them engages in anything like the comprehensive inquiry into what
is good, questioning all desires and all theories, that Plato’s suggested
theory of knowledge calls for. At one point or another, they all plunk for
an unexamined desire or passion or “theory of the good” – the timocrat
for honor, the oligarch for money, the democrat for a fair, but undis-
criminating treatment of all of his desires, and the tyrant for a ruling
passion that involves the development of demanding desires and ambi-
tious plans to satisfy them.25 Plato’s “philosopher,” on the other hand,
seeks to live a truly good life, which involves questioning all of these
desires and theories, so as to seek knowledge of what a truly good life
would be.
To suggest how there might be such a thing as a truly good life,
and how we could achieve knowledge of what it would be, T. H. Irwin

25 Here I’m drawing on T. H. Irwin’s summary description of the “deviant men” in Plato’s
Moral Theory, pp. 227–234.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 37

sketches how a person might seek to find out what constitutes a “worth-
while job” for himself:

He may find that some job does not fulfil his ideal, since he finds some-
thing lacking when he tries it. The problem is not that the job fails to
contribute instrumentally to some determinate end, that, for instance, it
produces too small a quantity of some internal glow or feeling of satisfac-
tion, but that, he finds on reflection, it does not satisfy the vague ideal
it was supposed to embody. Since the ideal was vague, he may discover
what it requires only when he finds that his present job does not match
it; he may not have realized that he values peace and quiet, or challeng-
ing work, until he tries a job without them. [The method here is that]
someone proposes candidates for ultimate end, and, when he reflects on
them, expresses demands which he could not have expressed previously,
and realizes their deficiencies. This is the process Plato advocates both
for gaining knowledge and for rational deliberation to guide the choice
of ultimate ends. The elenctic process described in the Cave, and the
ascent described in the Symposium and mentioned in the Republic [490b],
are the same process, using the same methods.
(Plato’s Moral Theory, p. 235)

This description should remind us of Hegel’s claims that I seek a stan-

dard by which to assess my desires (PR §§17–18), that finding such a
standard would involve systematizing my desires in some rational way
(§19), “purifying” and “educating” them into a life that makes sense
as a whole, for me (§§19 and 20), so that I can have something that
deserves to be called a “will,” and “free” (§21). Plato, like Hegel, is try-
ing to describe how we figure out what it is that we aspire to, and he is
arguing that what we really aspire to (when we approach the question
with the open mind of “the philosopher,” rather than with the ultimate
arbitrariness of the timocratic man, the oligarchic man, and so on) is
not just an accidental fact about ourselves, but reflects something that
is defensible as being objectively good for us – a truly good life.
Naturally, this picture invites the objection, from a believer in desire-
satisfaction such as Hobbes or Gauthier, that all that Plato’s “philoso-
pher” can really find out is what she desires. The searcher for a worth-
while job, a Hobbesian would object, is merely discovering in more
detail what she wants, not discovering anything that is defensible as
“objectively good” for her in any sense that goes beyond the fact that
she desires it. What is good for her is simply whatever satisfies her
desires.
38 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Plato’s response to this objection is that insofar as one takes a mere

“given” – any particular desire or passion, as one experiences it – as the
final authority on what to do, one’s rational part is not doing its job, and
one lacks the inner unity (harmony) that is the only non-negotiable nec-
essary ingredient in a good life. As Elizabeth Anderson says, “no matter
how the facts are presented to a person however naturalistically consti-
tuted, she always has room to ask whether her resulting attitudes are
rational or merited or endorsable.”26 To which Plato adds that only inso-
far as one is interested in this latter question – the question of whether
one’s felt attitudes are rational or merited or endorsable – is one’s
rational part doing its job. And only insofar as one’s rational part is doing
its job, does one “from having been many things . . . become entirely one”
(443d–e; emphasis added); only then, as Hegel would say, does one’s
will “have itself as infinite form, as its content, object, and end” (PR §21):
Only then (as I put it) does something that deserves to be called a will
(or, indeed, a self, or freedom) come into existence. Inquiry into what
is objectively good – the famous Platonic theme of the “Forms,” of
which the Form of the Good is the supreme instance – is important for
Plato precisely insofar as it makes it possible for a person to become
“one,” or (as Kant and Hegel put it) to become self-governing, and
thus free.
Assuming that we grant Plato this important anti-Hobbesian point –
that a good life must involve this oneness, via inquiry into the Good –
will his argument for justice go through? According to Plato’s more so-
phisticated account, in the Republic, Books v–ix, a person’s motivation
is not just given to her; rather, she can give new shape to her desires,
and perhaps generate brand new ones, in response to the insight she
achieves into the good. Thus, it is possible that she might shape or gen-
erate desires for the welfare or virtue or just treatment of others, even
if she starts out with no such desires. As far as the Republic goes, how-
ever, we do not discover why she should shape or generate such desires.
In his reconstruction of Plato’s argument, Irwin turns at this point to
the speech of Diotima in Plato’s Symposium (to which he thinks Plato
alludes at Republic 490a8–b7).27 In her speech, Diotima (as reported by
Socrates, who no doubt is speaking, as usual in the later dialogues, for

26 Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1993), p. 139.
27 T. H. Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory, pp. 234–5, and Plato’s Ethics, pp. 302–3. Chapter 18 of
Plato’s Ethics analyzes Diotima’s speech, and its relevance to justice, in detail.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 39

Plato) gives reasons why a true lover of “virtue” in the sense of excel-
lence – which is certainly one thing that a “philosopher,” as described
in the Republic, must be – will wish to “give birth” to virtue in others
(209c). This, Irwin suggests, is how Plato argues that a person whose
rational part is doing its job must be concerned with the welfare of
others (by being concerned about their virtue, which, insofar as it re-
flects their rational functioning, will be a major part of their welfare). If
fellow-citizens influence each other’s virtue, to some degree, and thus
can be concerned about each other in the same way that Diotima’s lover
of virtue is concerned about others – as opportunities to “give birth” to
more of what they value in themselves – that may be a sufficient basis
for the ordinary duties of justice between fellow-citizens.
This highly suggestive, but undeveloped argument is spelled out fur-
ther by Aristotle in his account of friendship, and of civic friendship in
particular, in his Nicomachean Ethics. Even there, however, its relevance
to the rationality of acting justly is still not made fully explicit, so that it is
only a minority of Aristotle’s readers who take him to be addressing that
issue at all.28 In Chapters 5 and 6, I will suggest some affinities between
what appear to be Plato’s and Aristotle’s arguments for the rational-
ity of justice and the extended argument for the same conclusion that
Hegel presents in his Logic and Philosophy of Spirit (and presupposes in
his Philosophy of Right). The main thing I wanted to draw attention to
here is the continuity between Plato’s and Hegel’s accounts of practical
rationality, in contrast to the Hobbesian/empiricist approach. To fin-
ish setting the stage for Hegel’s argument in his Logic and Philosophy
of Spirit, the indispensable final step is a sketch of Kant’s account of
practical reason, and the argument for morality that he bases on it, to
which I turn in the next section.

.. Kant on Autonomy and Ethics: The Apparent Failure

of a Great Argument
As I indicated in 2.1, Kant is in basic agreement with Plato and Hegel on
the relationship between rational self-government and desire. In Kant’s
view, a person (Sally, for example) who aims to be self-governed will fail

28 See T. H. Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), Chapter
18 (pp. 389–406), for a detailed reconstruction of (what Irwin takes to be) Aristotle’s
argument. Another very interesting treatment of some of these issues is A. W. Price, Love
and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
40 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

if she is governed by the desires that she happens to have, for these
desires – as they initially present themselves – are not herself; they are
given to her by her biological inheritance or her environment, and she
(on the other hand) is the one who has to decide, in each case, whether
this desire is a desire that she has reason to act on, or not. This is the
idea underlying Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”: An imperative that is
“categorical” is one whose relevance does not depend upon the person
in question’s having any particular desire. But if a person is not to be
governed, ultimately, by her desires, and if her actions are not to be
purely arbitrary (because “self-government” can hardly be government
by nothing at all), there must be something else that governs her. And
the only candidate for filling this role that Kant could think of was
the moral law (Groundwork, Ak. 446–7). This is his argument, then,
for the conclusion that a person cannot be fully free without caring
about morality, and other people.
But Kant seems to have overlooked another possible way of being
governed by something other than one’s desires. Sally could be gov-
erned not by the moral law but by prudence – by considerations of
what is best for herself – as long as those considerations do not reduce
to the satisfaction of her desires. If there are some things that are objec-
tively good for people – good for them regardless of what they happen
(subjectively) to want – and if Sally is governed by considerations having
to do with getting those things, then she will have just as much claim to
be “self-governed,” it seems, as someone who is governed by the moral
law.29 And a person who is governed only by objective prudence could,

29 A similar point against Kant’s argument is made by Bernard Williams when he states
that “standing back in reflection” (as required by Kantian autonomy) does not of it-
self “convert [us] into being[s] whose fundamental interest lies in the harmony of all
interests,” nor does it give us “the motivations of justice” (Ethics and the Limits of Phi-
losophy [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985], p. 69). Again, Allen Wood
points out that Kant seems not to distinguish between rules that are “universal” in the
sense that they apply to all agents (as would be the case, say, with considerations of what
is objectively good for every agent), and rules that are “universal” in the sense that
one could rationally will that all agents obey them (as in the first formula of the Cat-
egorical Imperative) (Hegel’s Ethical Thought [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990], p. 164). The will of an immoralist could perfectly well abide by rules that are
universal in the first sense, though not by rules that are universal in the second sense.
Kant needs to demonstrate that a fully rational will must abide by rules that are universal
in the second sense; but he seems only to have demonstrated that it must abide by rules
that are universal in the first sense. It seems that Kant has not fully come to grips with
the issue of the multiplicity of agents, which creates the distinctions that Williams and
Wood are pointing to. (In his Kant’s Theory of Morals [Princeton: Princeton University
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 41

presumably, be entirely immoral: could pay no heed to what is good

for other people, what is fair, and so forth. In this way, Kant’s argument
seems to run into exactly the same counterargument that I mentioned
in connection with Plato’s argument for justice in the Republic: that it
seems that a person needn’t care about morality or justice – about the
rights of others – in order to be guided by a rationality that goes beyond
the calculation of how to satisfy her given desires.
Probably the reason why Kant did not think of objective prudence as
another possible way of being self-governed is that, like many modern
philosophers, he tended to think of what is good for people as their
subjective happiness, which presumably mostly reflects the extent to
which their desires are satisfied. Or more precisely, like many modern
philosophers, Kant did not really address the question of what is “good
for” people, assuming that nothing will interest them, subjectively, ex-
cept pleasure or the satisfaction of their desires. It seems not to have
occurred to him that what is good for a person might be, at least in
part, just as objective, just as non-reducible to the satisfaction of her
desires, as he thought morality was, and that people might have reason
to live a life that is really good for them (and not just one that is pleasant
or that satisfies the desires they happen to have) in the same way that
they have reason to obey the Categorical Imperative of morality (also
not because it is pleasant or because it satisfies a desire they happen
to have). In this respect, Kant differs from those in the Platonic tra-
dition, including Aristotle and Joseph Butler, and follows, instead, the
empiricist tradition of which Hobbes and Gauthier – and David Hume
and Frances Hutcheson, by whom Kant was strongly influenced – are
representatives.30

Press, 1979], pp. 29–30 and 86–89, Bruce Aune raised what is essentially the same issue
that Wood raises.)
30 In defending Kant’s argument for the thesis that a fully rational agent must be moral
against Wood’s and Aune’s objections (which I cited in note 29), Henry Allison says that
“to adopt a maxim such as false promising in virtue of its assumed universality of applica-
bility is not to adopt it because of its conformity to . . . an unconditional practical law. On
the contrary, such a policy is deemed reasonable in the first place only because of cer-
tain presupposed ends, which derive whatever justification they might possess from the
agent’s desires” (“On a Presumed Gap in the Derivation of the Categorical Imperative,”
Philosophical Topics 19 [1991], p. 12; reprinted in his Idealism and Freedom [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996], pp. 143–154, at p. 153). The latter statement pre-
supposes, and Allison does not further justify, the premise to which I am objecting here:
that the relevance of ends having to do with what is good for an agent can only be due
to the agent’s desires. It is difficult to see how Kantians, who insist on the possible rele-
vance of non-desire-based reasons in the case of morality, can reasonably exclude them
42 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

To see why one might think that what is good for a person does not
always depend on what the person wants, imagine Sally as a person who
never thinks for herself, who has no interests and forms no plans of her
own, but always takes her cue from other people, and other people’s
interests and plans. The latter way of living seems to make her, as it were,
less of a person. Many people would probably agree that if Sally has the
capacity really to be a person, then not being one, or being less of one
than she could be, makes her worse off, regardless of what she wants or
desires, or how much she enjoys her (as it seems to us, truncated) life.
Many of us do seem to think of certain kinds of functioning as essential
parts of any really good life for a human being.31

.. Hegel’s Reformulation of Kant’s Argument

from Autonomy to Ethics
Would accepting this idea – that a significant part of what is good for
an individual may be objectively determined, not dependent on her
subjective desires – require us to abandon Kant’s project of deriving

in the case of rational prudence. To say that such reasons are a feature solely of morality
would be to beg the question that is at issue here. I first presented this argument against
Kant’s position in my “Mutual Recognition and Ethics: A Hegelian Reformulation of
the Kantian Argument for the Rationality of Morality, “American Philosophical Quarterly
32 (1995): 263–270, at pp. 263–264 and p. 268, note 3. T. H. Irwin makes the same point
against Kant – that he assumes without sufficient argument that only moral imperatives
can be categorical – in his “Kant’s Criticisms of Eudaemonism,” in S. Engstrom and J.
Whiting, eds., Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics. Rethinking Happiness and Duty (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 63–101, at pp. 75–79. (It was Irwin’s earlier writ-
ings and lectures that directed me to this issue.) Irwin points out that Joseph Butler
and Thomas Reid, two important eighteenth-century British philosophers and moral
theorists, both agree with Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and disagree with Kant, on this
point. I am not aware of any published response, in defense of Kant’s position, to my
statement or Irwin’s statement of this point. It has been suggested to me that Kant relies,
not on the idea that prudence reduces to the satisfaction of inclinations, but instead on
an insight that we can have, that although happiness is an appropriate end for human
beings, it isn’t always an overriding end, because morality sometimes requires us to subor-
dinate it to moral considerations, and thus happiness is not an unconditionally necessary
end. However, I don’t see how Kant does or can demonstrate the truth of this supposed
insight, with the means that he develops in the Groundwork or the Critique of Practical
Reason. What reason can he give for his claim that morality overrides prudence, except
for his argument (summarized at Groundwork, Ak. 446–447) that only morality achieves
genuine autonomy? It’s precisely the cogency of this argument that is challenged by
Irwin and me when we point out that prudence is not necessarily a heteronomous end.
Thus, the suggested defense seems to involve a petitio principii.
31 Robert Nozick makes this point vivid with his thought-experiment of the “experience
machine,” in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 42–45.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 43

the obligatoriness of ethics from our autonomy (thus confirming the

suspicions of critics of modern individualism that in the end it under-
mines the relationship between the practical reasoning of individuals,
on the one hand, and morality, on the other)? I mentioned the pos-
sible objectivity of the good as a problem for Kant’s project because
it suggests that being guided by morality need not be the only way to
be self-governing (not governed merely by one’s desires). But Hegel
gives us a version of Kant’s argument for which the possibility of objec-
tive prudence – the possibility of being governed by what is objectively
good for one – creates no problem. I call it a version of Kant’s argu-
ment because it gives a central role to the conception of freedom or
autonomy in which, as I indicated earlier, Hegel’s thinking is very close
to Kant’s; but in other respects, Hegel’s argument diverges consider-
ably from Kant’s, which is why it isn’t vulnerable to the objection to
Kant’s argument that I have been developing. Hegel’s argument begins
by challenging something that Kant treats as essentially uncontested –
the “reality” of finite things (among them, human moral agents). (I
will explain what Hegel means by “reality,” here, and his argument as
a whole, in Chapter 3.) It then reestablishes finite things’ reality, but
in a necessary relationship to an infinite that goes beyond them, and
then it derives the nature of the relationships between finite things –
that is, the nature of the relationships that affirm their selfhood, and
thus are fully free – from their relationship to this infinite. This outline
of Hegel’s strategy no doubt suggests a parallel – which is, in fact, a
genuine parallel – between Hegel’s treatment of this issue, and theologi-
cal treatments of it, including the “divine command theory,” according
to which humans’ ethical obligations derive from their relationship to
God. However, Hegel’s conception of God or the infinite does not focus
on commands (still less on the idea of God’s rewarding or punishing
us for obedience or disobedience), and it is based neither on religion,
as such, nor on “faith.” What it is based on is an extended metaphysi-
cal argument comparable to the arguments of Plato and Aristotle that
I mentioned – and on a conception of moral, religious, and mystical
experience as coinciding with and confirming, in important ways, the
conclusions of this metaphysical argument. And despite the different
trajectory that Hegel’s argument takes, its first step is intimately linked
to the first step of Kant’s argument because it is a defense of the reality
of the rational freedom or autonomy that (as Hegel agrees with Kant)
is a central feature of human existence, against skeptical criticisms to
which Kant’s conception of freedom or autonomy, in its original form,
44 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

is vulnerable. Hegel’s challenge to the reality of finite things, and his

reestablishment of that reality in a necessary relationship – through free-
dom and autonomy – to an infinite that goes beyond their finitude, are
his way of defending the reality of freedom or autonomy. But this recon-
ception of our reality, as free beings, is also his solution to the problem
of the rationality of ethics. Chapter 3 (3.8–3.17) gives a preliminary
overview of this reconception, in the form of “true infinity,” and the
full argument is analyzed in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6.

.. Kant and Hegel on God and the World

It will be clear from what I have just been saying that the theological
aspect of Hegel’s project – which I signalled in the title of my book –
is not a negligible one. Hegel’s theology is not based on Biblical revela-
tion, as such,32 and it is not a traditional Christian theology, but neither is
it a humanism with no serious metaphysical commitments. Hegel is just
as sincere in his objections to Enlightenment deism and atheism as he is
in his objections to the traditional Christian theologies that he criticizes
as embodying an “unhappy consciousness,” for which the “one-fold un-
changeable” and the “multifold changeable” – God and the world, in
effect – are “beings that are alien to one another” [einander fremde Wesen]
(PhG §§208; emphasis added). This talk of “alien”-ness reminds us of
Hegel’s complaint, in “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” of the
“alien”-ness and enslavement that are produced by the polar opposition
of reason to the inclinations, in Kant’s conception of practical reason-
ing (see 2.2). But just as Hegel doesn’t simply reject Kant’s dualism of
reason and the inclinations, when he finds that it makes the inclina-
tions alien to and a slave of reason, so also he doesn’t simply reject the
traditional Christian dualism of God and the world when he finds that
it creates a similar alienness and servitude. Unlike the Enlightenment’s
anti-theological humanists, Hegel thinks that there is a significant truth
in this Christian dualism, a truth that he undertakes to preserve in his
own conceptions of “true infinity,” of the relation between nature and
“Spirit,” and of God as “absolute Spirit.”
I assume that readers have some acquaintance with Enlightenment
attitudes toward God, exemplified (for example) in Diderot’s and

32 What I mean by this is that Hegel thinks that we can know God’s nature and existence
without appealing to the authority of the Bible as a supposedly divinely inspired revela-
tion.
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 45

Voltaire’s deism and in Bayle’s and Hume’s apparent atheism. In gen-

eral, the eighteenth century’s leading thinkers, being skeptical about
“revelation” and about traditional metaphysical arguments for God’s
existence, seek ways in which human beings can, if necessary, get along
without God. Kant’s position, in the Critique of Pure Reason, is that the
metaphysical proofs of God’s existence are all fallacious: They claim to
prove things that cannot be proven, because human knowledge can only
extend to “phenomena,” to objects of possible experience, of which God
is not one. However, Kant does assign a significant “regulative” role to
the idea of God (along with those of freedom and the whole of the
world), in the same Critique, and in the Critique of Practical Reason he
argues that although God’s existence cannot be known, God’s existence
(together with freedom and the immortality of the soul) is a necessary
“postulate ” of morality – the object of a necessary “practical faith” (cf.
B xxx). Hegel, however, objects to Kant’s polar opposition of theoretical
and practical realms (as well as to his other polar opposition between
“noumena” and “phenomena”). He sees these as creating the same sort
of “alien”-ness that he saw in the relationship between reason and in-
clinations, in practical reasoning as Kant described it, and he argues
that this sheer alienness prevents us from understanding not only the
relationship between the alien domains but also the relata themselves,
as realities. So he sets out to show, contrary to Kant, how theoretical and
practical thinking intertwine, at a deep level of our thinking and being,
and how our knowledge of ourselves and the world likewise intertwines
with our knowledge of freedom and of God, so that we have just as good
reason to claim to know the existence and nature of freedom and of
God as we have to claim to know the existence and nature of ourselves
and the world.
In arguing this, however, Hegel does not intend to reestablish the
kind of theology that was prevalent before the Enlightenment – the “un-
happy consciousness” of alienness. The “God” whose existence Hegel
aims to establish is not the polar opposite of the world, because a polar
opposite doesn’t truly transcend what it is opposed to – rather, it is defined
by what it is opposed to: “flight is not a liberation from what is . . . fled from;
the one that excludes still remains connected to [in Verbindung mit] what
it excludes” (WL 5:196/GW 21:163,10–13/175; emphasis added), and
therefore doesn’t really go beyond and isn’t really liberated from what
it excludes (or “flees from”). Such a “God” isn’t really free, and hence
isn’t really God. The only way for God to truly transcend the world,
be free, and be God, Hegel maintains, is for God to be the world’s
46 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

self-transcendence (as God, in turn, is the full realization of the world).

This is Hegel’s conception of “true infinity,” which I will lay out in Chap-
ter 3, and that underlies his notions of the “Concept” and “Spirit” as
well (Chapters 5 and 6). It’s the same conception by which he thinks
we can overcome the alienness of reason vis-à-vis the inclinations (as
I indicated in 2.2), the apparent incompatibility of responsibility and
natural determinism (2.3), and the apparent disconnection between
individuals, and between freedom and ethics (2.5–2.8).
Interpretations of Hegel’s attitude toward theology tend to assimilate
what he offers either (1) to the Enlightenment model (which continues
to be very influential, especially among academics), or (2) to the tra-
ditional Christian theology that Hegel himself criticizes as embodying
an “unhappy consciousness,” or (3) to various late-antique or occultist
sects (Gnosticism, Hermeticism). I think that a systematic interpretation
should enable us to avoid all three of these tendencies – or to combine
the virtues of all of them – by seeing how Hegel does justice both to
traditional theology and to the Enlightenment, without fully agreeing
with either of them, and without being guided by any sectarian occultist
tradition, though he certainly is interested in those traditions insofar as
they anticipate his own efforts to supersede, critically, the opposition
between traditional theology and the Enlightenment.33

33 Ludwig Feuerbach, in his influential early critique of Hegel’s metaphysical system, took
Hegel to be a theist of the traditional kind, and rejected him as such (see, for exam-
ple, his “Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy,” in The Fiery Brook. Selected
Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, trans. Z. Hanfi [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972], theses
12, 16, 22, and 23). Karl Ameriks, on the other hand, takes Hegel’s critique of the “un-
happy consciousness” to show that Hegel rejected traditional theism almost as flatly as
Feuerbach did (p. 260 in his “Feuerbach, Marx, and Kierkegaard,” in Karl Ameriks, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000]). Alexandre Kojève, in his Introduction à la Lecture de Hegel (Paris: Gallimard, 1947),
translated by James H. Nichols as Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (New York: Basic
Books, 1969), split the difference between the Enlightenment and Christian orthodoxy
by praising Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as atheistic while condemning his Logic and
his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences as theistic (Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,
pp. 146–147). Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die Christliche Gnosis (Tübingen: Osiander,
1835), diagnosed Hegel as a representative of the Gnostic heresy (in which Baur seems
to be prepared to follow him). Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1994), identifies Hegel more specifically with Valentinian
Gnosticism (p. 20). Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2001), argues that “we must understand Hegel as a Hermetic
thinker, if we are to truly understand him at all” (p. 2), and presents extensive evidence
of Hegel’s interest in the Hermetic ideas of Jacob Böhme, F. C. Oetinger, the Freemasons
and Rosicrucians, and so forth, and structural parallels between Hegel’s ideas and theirs.
None of these authors consider how Hegel might resolve the ongoing modern dispute
 naturalism, plato, kant, and hegel 47

From what I’ve said in this chapter about the major problems that
Hegel’s theory of freedom addresses – the nature of practical reason-
ing, the nature and reality of freedom, the relation between individual
freedom and morality, and the relation between the world and God –
and about the way in which Hegel approaches them, it will be evident
that in every case, the nature of the relationship between particularity
and “universality,” or the “higher standard” – how to overcome their
apparent “alienness” to each other, without collapsing one pole into
the other – will be central. Hegel’s account of how to do this, and of the
consequences of doing it, begins in his account of the relation between
the “finite” and the “infinite,” to which we will turn in Chapter 3.

between religion, or supernaturalism, and the Enlightenment’s naturalistic atheism or

deism, by finding mutually compatible elements of truth on both sides (see 3.17; and
for a more detailed response to Magee, see 3.18).
 3

REALITY, FREEDOM, AND GOD

(SCIENCE OF LOGIC I)

.. Introduction
This chapter deals with Hegel’s account of “determinate being”
(Dasein), the “ought,” and “infinity,” in the “Quality” section of the
first part – the Doctrine of Being – of his Science of Logic. This is the
beginning of Hegel’s extensive analysis of reality, freedom, subjectivity,
and God, in the Logic. Hegel doesn’t often use the word “God” in the
Logic; he says more about “freedom” and the “subject” in the final part
of the Logic (the Doctrine of the Concept) than in the earlier parts;
and his account of all of these topics develops additional dimensions
in the Philosophy of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right. But I will show that
his accounts in the Doctrine of Being of what he calls “negativity” and
“true infinity” address fundamental issues about reality, freedom, sub-
jectivity, and God in a way that establishes a pattern that the rest of his
philosophical system doesn’t depart from, but only elaborates. In par-
ticular, the articulation of “negativity” in “true infinity” shows: (1) how
we can preserve what is true in Kant’s respect for nature and in his
conception of freedom without becoming entangled in the problems
of the two “worlds” or two “standpoints” that Kant believed this combi-
nation required; (2) how thought is more fundamental than being, or
(as Hegel puts it) how “substance” becomes “subject”; and (3) what is
true, and not a mere “projection” of features of humanity, in traditional
theism. It is also crucial to interpreting (4) Hegel’s famous dictum, in
the Philosophy of Right, that “what is rational is actual and what is actual
is rational” (PR 24/20) – which has been thought by many readers to
undermine the idea of rational criticism of society and thus the idea of
individual freedom – and Hegel’s critique of the supposed “emptiness”

48
 reality, freedom, and god 49

of Kantian ethics, and his alternative, non-Kantian demonstration that

autonomy requires ethics.
The relevance of negativity and true infinity to Hegel’s ethical and
social theories, and the effective ubiquity of the topic of freedom in
Hegel’s Logic and his system, are underlined by the fact that that in
his lectures, Hegel used the same formula for the “concrete concept of
freedom” – namely, that ‘I’ “is with itself in its limitation, in this other”
(PR §7A; emphasis added) – that he used for true infinity: “the true
infinity consists . . . in being with itself in its other” (EL §94A; compare
EG §386,A). (In the text of PR §7R, what Hegel explicitly connects with
the will is “singularity” and the Concept, which figure in the third part
of the Logic, but it will become clear that negativity and true infinity are
intimately connected to these later developments in the Logic.) Since
(2), (3), and (4) are among the most controversial major features of
Hegel’s philosophy, a proper understanding of how he argues for them
can render his philosophy as a whole much more plausible than it is
without such an understanding. And (1), Hegel’s relation to Kant, is,
of course, another major domain of difficulty for interpreters of what
Hegel is up to, and for his critics.
In view of true infinity’s importance for all of these issues, it is not
surprising that in the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel in fact describes it as “the
fundamental concept [Grundbegriff ] of philosophy” (EL §95R; see 3.10,
below). Elsewhere he makes similar remarks about negativity, which I
will show is a germinal version of the same idea.
As I’ve indicated, I will be arguing that Hegel agrees with Kant about
an important feature of freedom, but reconceives it in a way that en-
ables him to avoid the problems that Kant’s conception runs into. To
make clear precisely what Hegel takes over and what he does not take
over from Kant, I should explain that besides (i) the two-worlds or two-
aspects theory, there is another significant part of Kant’s thinking about
freedom that Hegel does not try to defend. This is (ii) the fundamental
contrast between “spontaneity” and “receptivity,” which plays a central
role in Kant’s thinking about freedom especially in the Antinomies of
the Critique of Pure Reason (and which encourages Kant in his adoption
of (i)). The aspect of Kant’s thinking about freedom that Hegel does
take over and defend is (iii) the notion, which is fundamental for Kant’s
ethics, that the fullest form of freedom, which Kant calls “autonomy,”
involves the agent’s going beyond whatever contingent, more or less
natural inclinations she may experience, by questioning their authority
and seeking to be guided by something that is more ultimate and
50 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

more reflective of herself. (This more ultimate thing, Kant of course

takes to be the Categorical Imperative.) This third idea, (iii), which
is what I referred to in the previous chapter as Kant’s “rationalism”
about practical reasoning, has less to do (directly, at any rate) with
his specific form of metaphysics or epistemology, in the Critique of Pure
Reason. But in relation to non-Kantian conceptions of human function-
ing, such as those of Hobbes and Hume, in modern philosophy, it is
at least as distinctive and controversial as (i) and (ii) are; and if, as
seems plausible, full freedom involves being self-governed rather than
governed by something that is ultimately alien to oneself, then (iii),
by itself, has at least as much right to be called a theory of freedom
as (i) and (ii) do. Indeed, it may be (as Hegel evidently believes it
is) Kant’s most important single contribution to the understanding of
freedom.1
Now the problem is that Kant, with some plausibility, takes the form
of freedom that is described in (iii) to be incompatible with nature, as
Kant understands nature. He doubts that a process of rational question-
ing that goes beyond inclinations for its guidance can be understood
as a part of nature, with its (as he thinks) thorough-going determin-
ism, because that determinism will operate, Kant assumes, through our
being guided, ultimately, by certain finite properties – “inclinations” –
that will be effectively unquestioned, whereas the defining feature of
fully rational functioning is that it questions everything, and finds value,
ultimately, only in rational functioning itself (as embodied in “rational
agents”: the “Kingdom of Ends”). So, to deal with the incompatibility
of freedom with nature that seems to result from these assumptions,
Kant has recourse to (i): He allocates freedom either to a separate
world from the world that he associates with nature, or to a separate
“standpoint” from the standpoint that he associates with knowledge of
nature, distinguishing the “phenomenal” world or the standpoint of
natural determinism from the “noumenal” world or the standpoint
of freedom (see, in particular, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,
Ak. 451–2). He thus creates for himself the difficult problem of how to
relate these two worlds or standpoints to each other. Can one be un-
derstood from within the other? If not, how can they both be real (or
provide access to reality)? Can we make sense of the idea of there being
two realities, which are not subsumed within some more comprehensive

1 See 2.4, in Chapter 2, for comments on the two diverging themes – “rationalist” and
“voluntarist” – in Kant’s thinking about freedom.
 reality, freedom, and god 51

reality of which they are merely parts – or of there being two valid stand-
points, which are not judged valid from some more comprehensive
standpoint? Can we take fully seriously something, such as our sup-
posed freedom, which we can’t relate to such a more comprehensive
reality or standpoint?
Hegel’s response to these problems, which is developed in the argu-
ment by which he leads up to true infinity, is that, while he shares Kant’s
conception of freedom as in some way transcending the agent’s finite,
natural characteristics, he intends to show that in doing this, freedom
is not radically opposed to nature, but instead freedom (as we might
say) consummates nature. Hegel gives a persuasive account of “reality”
according to which nature without freedom is not fully real, so that if we
are inclined to regard nature as real, we must see it as internally related
to and consummated by freedom. And consequently, it makes no sense
to see nature and freedom, as Kant does, as two realms or standpoints
that are co-equal and opposed to one another. We can do justice to the
way in which freedom goes beyond nature, by understanding this as an
internal feature of the way in which freedom renders nature fully real,
rather than as a way in which freedom is radically opposed to nature.
The other striking features of Hegel’s philosophy that I mentioned –
his “idealism,” his philosophical theology, and his ethical and social
theories – likewise derive their special character very much from this
central conceptual move.
Hegel’s diagnosis of problems in finite being – problems which, he ar-
gues, require finite being to be linked to infinity and thus to freedom –
and his account of (“spurious” and “true”) infinity, have both been
found problematic by influential recent commentators.2 I will show

2 I am referring particularly to Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1975); Paul Guyer, “Hegel, Leibniz and the Contradiction in the Finite,” Philos-
ophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (1979): 75–98, also available in German in Rolf-
Peter Horstmann, ed., Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1978), pp. 230–260; Paul Guyer, “Thought and Being: Hegel’s Critique of
Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy,” in Frederick C. Beiser, ed., The Cambridge Companion to
Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Paul Guyer, “Absolute Idealism
and the Rejection of Kantian Dualism,” in Karl Ameriks, ed., The Cambridge Companion to
German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Michael Theunissen,
“Begriff und Realität. Hegels Aufhebung des metaphysischen Wahrheitsbegriffs,” in the
same volume edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann; and Michael Theunissen, Sein und Schein.
Die kritische Funktion der hegelschen Logik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), to all of
which I will be responding in the text and footnotes, to follow, and in succeeding chap-
ters. I have not found responses to Taylor, Guyer, or Theunissen, in the literature, that
clarify the issues that I’m addressing here.
52 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

that these commentators have misinterpreted Hegel, and that when we

understand his argument correctly, it provides an attractive alternative
to Kant’s “two-worlds” or “two-standpoints” approach to the problem
of freedom, while preserving what is most attractive in Kant’s concep-
tion of freedom, which is (as in (iii)) its notion of transcending finite
natural inclinations through unlimited rational questioning. Everyone
knows that Hegel claims somehow to overcome Kantian dualisms. But
in the case of this fundamental dualism, between freedom and being
or nature, no one has explained just how Hegel does this, or just what
he preserves from Kant, in doing it. When we understand this, we will
see that Hegel has a lot more to contribute to the discussion of the na-
ture and status of freedom than is generally recognized. And when we
see how the same argument also underlies Hegel’s idealism, his philo-
sophical theology, and his ethical and social thinking, we will have a
better understanding both of his distinctive positions in these areas
and of his “system” as a whole.
To clarify how this chapter relates to the later chapters in the book, I
should explain that Hegel’s procedure is to develop his ideas – and his
conception of freedom, in particular – from their absolutely simplest
“germ” form through many phases of increasing complexity and so-
phistication. This is why freedom, which is first mentioned by name in
the Logic’s chapter on “Quality,” is still being discussed (as “the realm
of freedom”) in the Logic’s final section, the Doctrine of the Concept,
and likewise in the third book of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences, the Philosophy of Spirit (as well as in the Philosophy of Right, whose
subject matter coincides with that of a major section of the Philosophy
of Spirit). The result of this procedure of Hegel’s is that fundamentally
important things are said about freedom at a very early stage in his
discussion, in “Quality,” while the full implications of these things are
developed only very gradually through the remainder of the system.
That is why we will be able to learn some crucially important things
about Hegel’s relation to Kant’s problems with freedom from the very
first part of Hegel’s Logic, even though further discussions of and elabo-
rations on that relation take place throughout the remainder of Hegel’s
system, and throughout the remainder of this book. It is why we can
find what amounts to a “key” to Hegel’s system in the first part of the
Logic, even though the full power of that key will not be apparent until
we have finished with the System.
I think it is clear that the Science of Logic (together with the Encyclopedia
and the Philosophy of Right) presents Hegel’s most systematic and mature
 reality, freedom, and god 53

treatment of these issues, so I haven’t examined in detail the earlier

treatments of them in his Jena writings, including the Phenomenology
of Spirit. For purposes of clarification, I sketch in some of these earlier
ideas in section 3.21 (and see notes 17 and 28). I should also explain that
by relating Hegel’s efforts, in “Quality,” to Kant, I do not by any means
intend to suggest that Hegel isn’t equally concerned in this analysis with
other philosophical traditions, and in particular with Plato, Aristotle,
and Spinoza. After all, Kant has no monopoly on the idea of the authority
of unlimited rational questioning; something very similar is presumably
at work in Plato’s conception of knowledge, in Aristotle’s conception
of the human “function,” and in Spinoza’s adaptation of their ideas.
I think there is an important sense in which Hegel is trying, here, to
integrate what he takes to be true in Kant with what he takes to be true
in Plato, in Aristotle, and in Spinoza, though for reasons of space I won’t
go into most of these connections in detail (but see notes 11 and 18).3
After presenting Hegel’s account of true infinity and explaining its
relevance to freedom, idealism, and God, I will analyze the “collapse”
that he says takes place in the idea of true infinity (as embodied in what
he calls “being-for-self”), and the way in which that collapse sets the
agenda for the remainder of the Logic. I begin with a brief introduction
to the Logic as a whole.

.. Objective Thinking

Hegel says in his Introduction that his Logic studies “objective think-
ing” – that is, “thought in so far as this is just as much the object [Sache]
in its own self, or the object in its own self in so far as it is equally pure
thought” (WL 5:43/GW 21:33,18–21/49). That the thought studied
by the Logic is “the object in its own self” can be interpreted in two
ways. It can be interpreted as meaning (1) that mere thinking, unre-
lated to reality, is of no interest to logic; and likewise reality unrelated

3 For a detailed account of Hegel’s relationship to Aristotle (which, however, unfortunately

doesn’t deal with Hegel’s argument in “Quality”), see A. Ferrarin, Hegel and Aristotle
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). An illuminating account of Hegel’s
relation to Aristotle is André Doz, La Logique de Hegel et les Problèmes Traditionels de l’Ontologie
(Paris: Vrin, 1987); see also Klaus Brinkmann, Aristoteles’ allgemeine und spezielle Metaphysik
(Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1979). A comprehensive survey of Hegel’s relationships
to Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant is given by Klaus Düsing, Hegel und die Geschichte
der Philosophie. Ontologie und Dialektik in Antike und Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1983), which includes a detailed survey of the scholarly literature up
to that date.
54 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

to thinking – unformulated or unformulable in thoughts – is of no

interest to it. What interests logic is thought insofar as it deals with re-
ality, and reality insofar as thought can deal with it. That thought is the
object itself can also be interpreted as meaning (2) that true objects,
those that are fully real, have the character of thought just as much as
they have the character of mere being or existence. Hegel here means
both (1) and (2), because he thinks that (2) has been established by
his Phenomenology of Spirit (see WL 5:43/GW 21:33,8–10/49). However,
he also gives an extensive argument for (2) within the Logic, which will
concern us in this chapter and the next two chapters, and which is en-
tirely independent of the Phenomenology. It seems that the argument of
the Logic itself could proceed, initially, on the basis of (1), alone, in
which case the Logic would not depend upon the Phenomenology for its
cogency. I will return to (2) – to Hegel’s idealism, summarized in his
famous thesis that we must understand “the true not only as substance
but equally as subject” (PhG, p. 23, §17) – in 3.14 and in Chapter 5,
where I will be in a position to explain what Hegel means by it. But
I can say in advance that what he means is not that non-mental re-
ality is located “in” any mind or minds, or that the mind “imposes”
certain features on a reality that is in other respects external to it.
Hegel’s “absolute idealism” is different both from George Berkeley’s
(as Hegel calls it) “subjective idealism,” and from Kant’s “transcenden-
tal idealism,” and I will suggest that it is more plausible than either of
them.4

.. Being
As the first topic for his study of objective thinking, Hegel chooses
pure being. He chooses it because thought must have some sort of
content, but the content that it’s assumed to have at the beginning of
the investigation must not be anything specific, or the nature of that
specific content might prejudice the subsequent developments. So he
chooses the least specific content that he can think of: being that is pure
in the sense that it has no particular characteristics whatever. All that

4 For an energetic argument against the traditional assumption that post-Kantian German
“idealism” somehow continued the subjectivism of Berkeley’s idealism, see Frederick C.
Beiser, German Idealism. The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2002). An important argument that Hegel, in particular, is
continuing neither Berkeleyan nor Kantian idealism is Kenneth R. Westphal’s Hegel’s
Epistemological Realism (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989).
 reality, freedom, and god 55

it has is “immediacy” (WL 5:82/GW 21:68,3/82): it is not mediated by

anything other than itself.
Hegel’s choice of “being” as his point of departure does not imply
any belief that it is somehow the most fundamental concept for logic
or for philosophy. Quite the reverse, in fact: the most basic, because
most “concrete,” concept of the Logic will be the realized “Concept,”
which Hegel calls the “Idea,” and the most basic concept of the system
as a whole will be Absolute Spirit, because in each case these concepts
will have been shown to be indispensable for making workable sense
of all of the concepts that go before them, beginning with being. As
Hegel often says, the “truest” concepts – those that are least in need of
reformulation – are the results of the dialectical process, rather than its
points of departure.
Hegel’s initial development of pure being is the famous first triad
of the Logic: Being, Nothing, and Becoming. Pure being, Hegel says,
contains no distinguishable determination or content, because that
would set up a contrast within or outside it that would eliminate its
purity. So “it is pure indeterminateness and emptiness” (WL 5:82/GW
21:69/82). “There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here
of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is any-
thing to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking”
(ibid.). But this indeterminate immediacy is “in deed [in der Tat] noth-
ing” (WL 5:82/GW 21:69,3/82). Since being has no determinacy or
content, there is nothing, in practice, to distinguish it from nothing.
Turning, then, to nothing, Hegel observes that inasmuch as we assume
that there is “a difference between intuiting or thinking something
or nothing,” nothing has a distinct “meaning” (Bedeutung), and in that
sense nothing “is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking” (WL 5:82/GW
21:69/82). But this makes nothing “the same empty intuiting or think-
ing as pure being.” And thus nothing is “the same determination, or
rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure
being” (ibid.; emphasis added). Thus, being has become (turned out to
be) nothing, and nothing has become (turned out to be) being. “Their
truth, then, is this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one
in the other: becoming [Werden], a movement in which both are distin-
guished, but by a difference which has equally immediately dissolved
itself” (WL 5:83/GW 21:69–70/83).
Hegel anticipates the likely objection that if “being and nothing are
the same,” as he has asserted, “then it is the same whether this house
is or is not, whether these hundred dollars are part of my fortune or
56 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

not” (WL 5:87/GW 21:72/85). He replies that the objection misses

the meaning of his assertion, which has to do not with determinate or
finite beings, such as this house or my fortune, which are what they
are through their relations to other determinate or finite beings in the
world, but rather with “the pure abstractions of being and nothing”
(WL 5:87/GW 21:72/86). Taken in abstraction from relations to other
determinate or finite beings, being and nothing are the same.
So Hegel concludes, contrary to Parmenides (WL 5:84/GW
21:70,21/83) as well as to “so-called ordinary common sense” (which
Hegel contrasts with logical “science” [WL 5:86/GW 21:71,34–36/84]),
that “nowhere on heaven or on earth is there anything that does not contain
within itself both being and nothing” (WL 5:86/GW 21:71,6–8/85). This
is because all the subsequent categories of his Logic, such as “deter-
minate being, quality, and generally all philosophical Concepts” (WL
5:86/GW 21:72,25/85), and thus everything that is determinate and
real, will contain both of them. And this presence of both being and
nothing within everything that is determinate and real will continue to
be important, because

The thinking or representing [Vorstellen] which has before it only a spe-

cific, determinate being [ein bestimmtes Sein, das Dasein], must be referred
back to the previously mentioned beginning of the science made by Par-
menides, who purified and elevated his representation, and thus also
that of posterity, to pure thought, and thereby created the element of the
science.
(WL 5:90–91/GW 21:75–76/88; emphasis added)

That is, it won’t be enough to describe something as (for example)

a “determinate being”: it will still be necessary to take into account
the presence of Parmenides’s abstract “being,” within that determinate
being. Why will this be necessary? Hegel says that this

is to be regarded not only as the very first theoretical demand but even as
the very first practical demand, as well. When for example a fuss is made
about the hundred dollars, that it does make a difference to the state of
my fortune whether I have them or not . . . we can remind ourselves that
man ought to elevate himself to that abstract universality in his attitude
[Gesinnung] in which he is indeed indifferent to the existence or non-
existence of the hundred dollars . . . just as it ought to be a matter of
indifference to him whether he is or is not,
(WL 5:91/GW 21:76,2–3/89; emphasis added)
 reality, freedom, and god 57

which is a duty that is recognized, Hegel says, both by Romans and by

Christians.
What in the world does this apparently moral self-“elevation” have to
do with issues of actual being and non-being? Hegel doesn’t explain
the connection, here, but it will be absolutely central to his Logic as
a whole, into which it will make a formal and explicit entrance in the
next chapter of this same section when Hegel introduces the category
of the “ought” as the way in which finite being “goes beyond itself” into
infinity, and thus becomes capable of full “reality.” (A germinal version
of this “going beyond” is already present in the Something’s “negation
of the negation,” prior to the discussion of finitude and infinity.) Hegel
is going to argue that the presence of a certain kind of moral effort –
and of a certain kind of intellectual effort, of which the moral effort
is actually a sub-species – in fact makes a crucial difference to what
can be said to be “real,” “actual,” and so forth. The “abstraction” that
Parmenides engaged in when he focussed exclusively on “being” and
argued against the reality of “nothing” is one expression, in Hegel’s
view, of this special moral or intellectual effort, so that even though
Hegel thinks that Parmenides’s thesis about nothing was mistaken, he
believes that the process of abstraction that led Parmenides to that
thesis exhibits an indispensable aspect of reality, to which we should be
“referred back” when we are contemplating such apparently simple and
commonsensical concepts as “determinate being.” Section 3.7 of this
chapter (together with Sections 5.5–5.7 in Chapter 5) will explain the
role of this “abstraction” in some detail.
The immediate upshot of Hegel’s discussion of being and nothing
is, as I said, “becoming.” This is not just an abstract “unity” of being and
nothing; rather, “it consists in this movement, that pure being is immedi-
ate and one-fold, that it is therefore equally pure nothing, that there is a
difference between them, but a difference that no less supersedes itself and
is not” (WL 5:95/GW 21:83,22–26/92). To make room for becoming,
being and nothing must be demoted to “moments” of this movement,
“still different, but superseded” (WL 5:112/GW 21:92,21–23/105). Be-
coming, then, takes two forms – the becoming of being from nothing,
and the becoming of nothing from being: that is, coming-into-being
(Entstehen) and ceasing-to-be (Vergehen). Both being and nothing “van-
ish” in this process (because being turns out to be nothing, and nothing
turns out to be being), and as a result becoming, which depends on the
difference between them, also vanishes (WL 5:113/GW 21:93/106).
The resulting state of vanishment is not, however, just nothing, “because
58 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

in that case it would just be a relapse into one of the determinations

that were already superseded [that is, into nothing], and not the result
[Resultat] of nothing and of being. It is the unity of being and nothing
which has settled into a stable one-foldness,” a one-foldness that is
“being, no longer however in its original form, but rather as a determina-
tion of the whole,” or a “one-sided immediate unity of these moments,”
which Hegel calls “Dasein” (commonly translated as “determinate
being”) (WL 5:113/GW 21:94/106; emphasis added).
This last phase of the argument, in which Hegel maintains that the
vanishing of being and nothing can’t yield a mere nothing, is (once
again) vital for his overall project in the Logic. If the “movement” that
results from conceptual scrutiny of the kind that he is engaged in could
simply cancel itself out and yield nothing, it wouldn’t get anywhere.
Here he tells us why it doesn’t do that: because if the result were “noth-
ing,” it would reflect only one of the two elements of the problem that
has to be resolved, and thus it wouldn’t be a real solution, or, as he says,
a “result.” (In using the words “moment” and “result,” Hegel has in
mind the analogy of the parallelogram of forces, in mechanics, in which
two “moments” are combined into a “resultant” force [WL 5:114/GW
21:95,36–6/107].) That is why Hegel’s famous process of “Aufhebung ”
or “supersession” (often translated as “sublation”) both “cancels” and
“preserves” what it begins with, as Hegel goes on to point out in his
“Remark” (WL 5:114/GW 21:94,15–18/107). It cancels what it starts
out with because it must somehow go beyond it; but at the same time
it preserves what it starts out with because it’s only by preserving what it
starts out with, in some form, that it can be the “result” of what it starts
out with, and avoid falling back into only one of the aspects of what it
started out with (namely, the negative aspect, the “nothing”), and not
reflecting the other aspect as well.
Against Hegel’s notion of “supersession” or (as Hegel also calls it) “de-
terminate negation,” Michael Rosen objects that in order to arrive at the
conclusion that negation that is properly understood must “contain”
(as well as cancelling) what it negates – via the assumption (not stated
by Hegel) that an instance of negation, like an “operation [that is]
performed upon some material,” must “adapt itself to the contours
of whatever it is that is to be negated” – Hegel appears to make “the
traditional, but paralogistic, assumption of equating negation with an
ordinary transitive verb of action.”5 Hegel’s response to this objection

5 Michael Rosen, Hegel’s Dialectic and Its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982), p. 32.
 reality, freedom, and god 59

is that what he is designating as “negation” is not simply the intellectual

operation that we usually refer to by that word (and that we might also
call “denying” the truth of a proposition or of a predication); rather,
what Hegel has in mind is the construction of a contrasting statement
or position, one that addresses the issue that was addressed by the po-
sition that is being “negated,” while revising the first position’s view of
the issue. When Hegel says that the new statement or position must
be a “result” of both of the prior positions, rather than merely repeat-
ing one of them (namely, in this case, “nothing”), he means that it
should respect the partial truth that is or may be contained in each of
them. As far as his discussion has so far revealed, being and nothing
are both legitimate conceptions of what it is that we discuss when we
open our mouths. It seems that they can’t both simultaneously be fully
adequate conceptions, since each of them “becomes” the other, rather
than remaining itself; so a new conception is needed that will embody
what is true in each of them, while being “stable” rather than constantly
becoming something other than itself. “Determinate being” (Dasein)
presents itself as a candidate for this role. No reason has been given for
rejecting either being or nothing in toto; thus if they can be “preserved,”
in part, within “determinate being,” while their instability is overcome,
they should be so preserved. If we are interested in making intellec-
tual progress, and not merely in rejecting proposals that have flaws, we
should try to find a “result” of a problem – a reconciling conception
that grants some truth to the prior, problematic conceptions – rather
than flatly rejecting those conceptions. Hegel’s procedure of “supers-
ession” or “determinate negation” is an optimistic one, which refuses
to give up anything completely until good reasons have been given for
giving it up completely.

.. Determinate Being, Quality, and the

Beginning of the Subject
The main discussion that we will be considering in this chapter is
Hegel’s treatment of “determinate being” (Dasein). Quality is the way in
which determinate being is determinate. (“Determinate,” here, means
“specific,” rather than externally “determined,” by, for example, causa-
tion.) Hegel’s treatment of the idea of something’s being itself – “being-
within-self,” Insichsein – and eventually his treatment of the “ought” and
the self-transcending “infinite,” will emerge from his consideration of
what it is for determinate being to be a specific quality.
60 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel describes the determinateness of quality as involving both

“reality” and “negation.” These are the successors, within determinate
being, of being and nothing (WL 5: 118/GW 21:98–99,29–35/111).
What Hegel seems to have specifically in mind, in connection with
“negation,” is that qualities are organized in what we might call a
conceptual space, such that being one particular quality is not being
the other qualities that are conceptually related to it. Being the qual-
ity, “red,” for example, is not just being a conceptually indeterminate
“something or other,” knowable only by direct inspection; rather, it is
being something that belongs in the conceptual space of color, and thus
it is not being the color, “blue,” the color, “yellow,” and so on. In this way,
the identity of the quality, “red,” essentially involves reference to what
that quality is not: It essentially involves “negation.”6 Hegel sometimes
refers to this dependence of quality on other qualities as “alteration”
(WL 5:127/GW 21:106,8–9/118; EL §92,A), but it’s important to re-
member that in this initial context of quality as such, there is nothing
analogous to time (or space) in which literal alteration could take place,
so the term should be understood as referring to a relationship of logical
dependency rather than to one of temporal sequence or transforma-
tion, as such.
Under the heading of “reality,” in contrast to “negation,” Hegel seems
to want to capture a thought shared by philosophers such as John Duns
Scotus, F. H. Jacobi, and C. S. Peirce, who stress an irreducible brute
“this-ness,” or haecceitas, distinct from any relatedness or subsumption,
as essential to reality. It seems to them that what a particular determi-
nate being or quality is should just be a fact about it, rather than being
a fact about how it relates to innumerable other determinate beings
or qualities.7 Hegel’s introduction of “negation” alongside of “reality”

6 See Justus Hartnack, An Introduction to Hegel’s Logic, p. 20; Clark Butler, Hegel’s Logic.
Between Dialectic and History, p. 46; P. Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels Analytische Philosophie,
pp. 126–7.
7 Paul Guyer traces Hegel’s assumption that a being ought to have its quality by virtue of
itself back to Leibniz’s principle that “the predicate is in the subject,” and Guyer interprets
Hegel’s entire subsequent argument for the “contradictory” nature of finitude, which I
discuss in sections 3.6 and 3.7, as relying on that principle, thus making it appear that
Hegel neglects the alternative possibility that some predicates are simply relational, and
do not belong to the individual, taken by itself (“Hegel, Leibniz and the Contradiction in
the Finite,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 [1979]: 75–98). The interpretation
that I adopt, on the other hand, does not require Hegel to ignore the possibility of
relational predicates, since it argues that even such paradigmatically monadic predicates
as color (monadic, that is, if one ignores Lockean arguments about secondary qualities)
 reality, freedom, and god 61

makes it clear that “reality” (as something like “this-ness”) is not with-
out problems, but that doesn’t cause him to abandon it. Working its
problems out will, in effect, be the motor of the Logic as a whole.
If Hegel were asked: Why should we be concerned about this “reality”
of determinate being? Why couldn’t we just accept the notion that all
qualities are interdependent, defined by their relations to other qual-
ities, “all the way down,” with no remainder (and that all of them are
thereby equally “real” or equally “unreal”)? – his answer would be that
if something could be what it is by virtue of itself, rather than solely by
virtue of its relations to other things, it would clearly be more real, when
taken by itself, than something that depends on its relations to other
things to make it what it is. This is not to say that the thing that de-
pends on other things is, in any sense, illusory – the “reality” that we’re
talking about here is not contrasted with illusion, but with depending
on others to determine what one is. Something that makes itself what
it is has greater self-sufficiency than something that doesn’t do this, and
this self-sufficiency is likely to be among the things that we think of
when we think of “reality.” If it is among the things we think of, this
could be because we’re aware that “reality” – like the word that Hegel
uses, which is real, Realität – is derived from the Latin res, or “thing,”
so that it contrasts not only with illusion but with anything that is less
independent or self-sufficient than a thing.
To see that reality in this sense (self-sufficiency, rather than non-
illusoriness) could be a matter of degree – that something can be more
or less self-sufficient than something else – consider nature as a whole.
If nature depended on a relationship to something that is other than it,
to make it what it is, it would seem to fall short of what natural science
assumes about nature. For natural science assumes that it isn’t necessary
to consider anything other than nature in order to understand what
nature is. (For our present purposes, let’s assume that mathematics is
an aspect of nature.) That is, natural science assumes that nature is

involve “negation” insofar as identifying them requires reference to others. So the issue
isn’t whether a being has every one of its “predicates” by virtue of itself alone; the issue
is whether it has any of them by virtue of itself alone. What Guyer doesn’t notice is how
the interdependence that goes with “negation” is balanced, in Hegel’s discussion, by
the equally great importance that Hegel ascribes to “reality” (which leads him to the
“something,” the “finite,” and the “infinite,” as I will explain). Interpretations such as
Guyer’s and Charles Taylor’s, which emphasize Hegel’s sympathy with Spinoza’s single
substance as against the multiplicity of independent individuals that is assumed by Leibniz
and by common sense, neglect both the problem of “reality” versus “negation” and the
role that Hegel assigns to autonomy/transcendence in solving that problem.
62 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

self-sufficient, or, as Hegel puts it, maximally “real.” Whether science

is right in assuming this is not the issue, for the moment; the point is
simply that Hegelian “reality”, or self-sufficiency, seems to be something
that natural science does expect to find, at least in nature as a whole.
Probably this kind of self-sufficiency is one of the features of nature
that makes everyone inclined to call it “real.” And it seems reasonable
to regard this feature as sufficiently important, to say that any part of
nature that lacks it will be (in that sense) less “real” than nature itself.
Nature as a whole, we might think, doesn’t depend on anything else to
determine what it is, whereas some of its parts, such as the colors that I
mentioned as depending on their relations to other colors to determine
what specific color they are, do depend on others for this. In the case of
these parts, elements, or aspects of nature, whatever “reality” they have
will derive from their relationship to nature (the self-sufficient totality)
rather than being their own, in their own right. In which case, it seems
reasonable to refer to them as less “real” than nature itself, whose reality
is its own, in its own right.
For another example, consider an attribute, which apparently can be
understood as an attribute only in relation to some thing that it’s an
attribute of, whereas a thing (it seems) can be understood as a thing
without having in mind a relation to attributes. To be an attribute is
to belong to a thing, whereas to be a thing is not, as such, to have
attributes (even though in practice, of course, a thing must have them).
So the thing, as such, seems to be more self-sufficient than the attribute;
it is what it is merely by virtue of itself, rather than by virtue of its
relation to something else; its reality depends solely on itself, whereas
the attribute’s reality depends on something other than itself, and this
makes it seem reasonable to say that, to that extent, the thing has more
reality, or is more real, than the attribute has or is.
Both with nature as a whole, then, and with a thing as opposed to an
attribute, it seems that there is an understandable point to imputing a
greater degree of “reality” or self-sufficiency to one item (namely, the
thing, or nature as a whole) than to the other (the attribute, or the part
of nature that depends on its relation to other parts of nature to make it
what it is). Now what Hegel is suggesting is that we can apply this idea of
greater and lesser degrees of reality or self-sufficiency not only to these
more complex cases, but even to simple qualities, as such. A quality that
is what it is by virtue of itself, and not by virtue of its relations to other
qualities, would be more “real” than one that depends on its relations
to others to make it what it is.
 reality, freedom, and god 63

The question is, then, how will this reality or self-sufficiency of qual-
ities – if they have it – relate to “negation” (the way in which qualities
are organized in a conceptual space such that being one particular
quality is not being the other qualities that are conceptually related to
it)? To implement this idea – of the quality’s being what it is simply
by virtue of itself rather than by virtue of its relation to other quali-
ties – Hegel introduces the “something” (Etwas), which he describes
as “the negation of the [first] negation” (WL 5:123/GW 21:103/116):
that is, as something that defines itself as being, or seeks to be, inde-
pendent of its relation to others. The first negation determined (that is,
specified) the determinate being in terms of what it is not; this second
negation determines it as not being determined in terms of what it is not.
But the second “negation,” Hegel says, doesn’t signify a “simple return
to the simple beginning, to determinate being as such” (ibid.), because
the first “negation” was there for a good reason (namely, that qualities
really are organized in a conceptual space). Instead, Hegel says, the
new being, the “something,” is determinate being that is “again equal
to itself through supersession [Aufhebung] of the distinction”; it is “the
simple oneness of determinate being resulting from this supersession”
(ibid.) – a oneness that is achieved by overcoming or superseding, by
subsuming in a higher-level unity, the initial, necessary distinction.8
Hegel uses a variety of terms for this project of what we might call the
something’s “being itself,” as opposed to its just being part (a “member,”
as one might say) of a conceptually structured universe, but they all
refer to the something’s being “self-related in opposition to its relation
to other” (WL 5:128/GW 21:107,32–33/119) – self-related, that is, in a
way that aims somehow to overcome its relation to other, its dependence
on others for the determinateness of its quality.9

8 Throughout the remainder of his System, Hegel refers to the movement of returning to
an initial unity, but on a higher level (or, as he often puts it, with more “concreteness”), as
achieving “reality.” For example, “substance is . . . the real essence, or essence insofar as it
is united with being and has entered into actuality” (WL 6:245–246/GW 12:11,34/577).
Reality is never merely “given”; rather, it is achieved, and this achievement is the initial
unity’s becoming “again equal to itself through supersession of the distinction.”
9 Charles Taylor interprets the passages that I’m discussing in the text here as moving from
the “unexceptionable point that all reality must be characterized contrastively, that in this
sense determinate beings negate others, to the notion of determinate beings in a kind
of struggle to maintain themselves in face of others, and hence as ‘negating’ others in
an active sense,” where what Taylor has in mind is causal interaction (Hegel [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975], p. 234); and he interprets Hegel’s entire discussion
of quality and infinity in these terms. My interpretation absolves Hegel of the illicit move,
64 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel describes the something’s “negation of the negation” – its

project of overcoming its dependence on others for the determinate-
ness of its quality – as “the beginning of the subject . . . only as yet quite
indeterminate” (WL 5: 123/GW 21:103,27–28/115; emphasis added).
His point is that at whatever stage of development or complexity it is
that a being is capable of being “self-related in opposition to its relation
to other,” it is at that stage that the possibility of “being-within-self,”
or what I just called “being itself,” enters the picture. What Hegel in-
tends to do here, in first introducing the notion of “being-within-self,”
is merely to mark off the possibility of this sort of complexity, not to say
anything about what kind of beings might have it in practice. However,
the fact that “the beginning of the subject” is already present here, near
the beginning of “Quality” (and not only, for example, in the much
later “Subjective Logic,” the Doctrine of the Concept), is certainly sig-
nificant in relation to the relevance that I will be arguing that “Quality”
has to issues about freedom, subjectivity, and God.

.. “Negativity,” or the “Negation of the Negation”

I should say a bit more, before going on, about Hegel’s famous notion of
the “negation of the negation,” which he also calls “absolute negativity,”
or usually plain “negativity,” for short (WL 5:123–124/GW 21:103,35–
37/115–116), because it will play a central role in the argument of the
whole of the Science of Logic. It is obvious from what I said initially about
“negation” that it is not equivalent to the relationship of denial that
is formalized by modern formal logic as −p, “the proposition p is not
true,” or −p(x), “the predicate p is not true of x.” Instead, it represents
a conceptual relationship between one quality and another: quality x
is not – it contrasts with, is different from – quality y. It should not be
surprising, then, that the second level of “negation,” the “negation of the
negation,” is not simply the denial of the first “negation.” Instead, it is
a conceptual relationship between the initial conceptual relationship
(between two qualities) and a new, as we might call it, “hyperquality.”
This hyperquality contrasts with the quality x (that contrasts with qual-
ity y) in that, rather than being determined, in the way that x is, by its

from contrastive to causal “negation,” that Taylor suspects him of making, and I think it
explains all the passages that he cites. I discuss Taylor’s broader interpretation of “Quality”
in 3.22. Terry Pinkard raises similar objections to Taylor’s treatment of “negation” in his
Hegel’s Dialectic. The Explanation of Possibility (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988),
p. 187 n. 49.
 reality, freedom, and god 65

contrast to another quality y (and no doubt to other qualities as well),

the hyperquality is determined, somehow, by itself.
What is the significance of relating the hyperquality to the contrast
between x and y at all? Why does Hegel refer to its determination – in his
formula, “the negation of the negation” – by the same word, “negation,”
which he uses to describe the determination of an ordinary quality,
and why does it (therefore) seem appropriate to refer to the result
as, precisely, a “hyperquality”? This relationship is significant, and this
terminology is appropriate, because the relationship determines the
hyperquality through a contrast, just as first-order “negation” determines
the quality x through a contrast. The hyperquality – call it “X” – is
something that is determined by the fact that it is not determined by
what it contrasts with. But being determined in this way is precisely
being determined by a contrast (though it’s a second-level contrast, a
contrast with all first-order qualities as such, rather than a contrast with
any particular first-order quality). That’s why Hegel uses the same word,
“negation,” for the second-level relationship.
So Hegel’s analysis and terminology, I suggest, are telling us some-
thing quite complex and important. They are telling us that while self-
determination is a powerful and central idea, it is an idea that can
be fully understood only through its intimate relationship to “other-
determination.” They are also telling us that self-determination is un-
derstood only when it is understood as both other than and the same as
other-determination, insofar as it is itself understood through the same
relationship of contrast, “negation,” that is characteristic of its oppo-
site, other-determination. In this way, Hegel is registering an important
reservation in relation to the idea of the sovereign, self-determining self.
He’s not saying, as Nietzsche and post-modernists often seem to say, that
this self is an illusion, there is no such thing. But he is saying that the
self-determining self must be understood in a way that its theorists often,
indeed characteristically, do not understand it: namely, as inseparable
from the “other,” the other-determined non-self. (Kant, in particular, is
guilty of missing this point, insofar as he implies that the realm or the
point of view of self-determination, freedom, and noumena could, in
principle, be fully understood – by a divine intelligence, if not by a hu-
man one – without reference to its counterpart realm or point of view of
other-determination, nature, and phenomena.) When I say that the self-
determining self is “inseparable from” the other-determined non-self,
I emphatically do not mean that it is “reducible to” the latter. The
self-determining self is not reducible to the other-determined non-self,
66 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

because the self-determining self is a conceptually necessary step be-

yond the other-determined non-self. What I do mean is that it is “un-
thinkable without” the latter: The self-determining self can only be
thought, Hegel maintains, in the same thought with the other–determined
non-self because the self-determining self is itself conceived by it-
erating, in the “negation of the negation,” a concept that belongs,
initially and characteristically, to the description of the domain of
other-determination. What happens here is that the domain of other-
determination, in a sense, goes beyond itself, rather than being tran-
scended or opposed by something that is simply other than itself. It goes
beyond itself in the idea of something that is other than other-determined.
There is nothing, Hegel implies, that is “simply other,” since the idea
of otherness (being determined as “other than”) transforms itself, in
the way that I just described, into the idea of something that is itself
(something that is determined as itself, rather than as “other than”).
But neither is there anything that is “simply itself,” since the idea of
being itself is generated by an iteration of the idea of otherness. Other-
ness penetrates into selfhood – and vice versa.10 We will discuss these
complex and powerful ideas further in connection with true infinity, in
which they are spelled out further.

.. Finite Being

As a counterpart term to “being-in-itself,” Hegel’s term for the way in
which “negativity” is “self-related in opposition to its relation to other,”
Hegel introduces “being-for-other,” which designates the way in which,
as we discussed in 3.4, determinate beings in fact logically depend upon
others for the determinateness of their qualities.
Now, however, Hegel introduces a major problem for “being-in-
itself.” We need to be able to think about being-in-itself and being-for-
other, he suggests, not just as “moments” in the logical struggle between
self-determination and other-determination that we have been describ-
ing, but also as concrete properties of the determinate being.11 But

10 Shortly after the passage that I have been discussing, Hegel discusses an “other that,
taken in its own self, is not the other of something but the other in its own self [das Andere
an ihm selbst], the other of itself,” where his example is “physical nature,” which is the
“other” of “spirit,” which is “the true [wahrhafte] something” (WL 5:127/GW 21:106,33–
39/118).
11 Hegel says we need to see them as “present in it,” an ihm (WL 5:129/GW 21:108,1/120) –
or elsewhere, equivalently, as “posited,” gesetzt (WL 5:130/GW 21:109/121). Klaus
 reality, freedom, and god 67

to be a property is to be, in effect, a determinate quality. And being

a determinate quality, according to the preceding analysis, necessar-
ily involves a relationship to others. So being-in-itself, in order to be
a property present in the determinate being, will necessarily involve a
relationship to others, or being-for-other.12 But if being-in-itself is just
a particular kind of being-for-other, what then is left of its program of
being “self-related in opposition to its relation to other”?
This might sound like the end of the road for the project of being-in-
itself. However, Hegel now describes what seems like a possible way out,
which he calls “finitude.” Finitude will not be his ultimate solution to the
problem of how something can be in charge of its own quality, because
finitude will fail, too; but it is a possible solution, and Hegel considers
it for the sake of systematic completeness, en route to his preferred
solution, the infinite. The basic thought associated with finitude seems
to be that to the extent that the “other” doesn’t exist, the something
won’t have to be “for” it (have its quality through its relation to it), so
that the something’s being-in-itself can be present in it as a concrete
property without deteriorating into a mere being-for-other. “In the limit,
the non-being-for-other comes to the fore, the qualitative negation of the
other, which is thereby kept apart from the something, which is reflected
into itself” (WL 5:135–136/GW 21:113,17–20/126; emphasis added).
To allow for the possibility that other somethings may in fact exist, to
some extent, we must assign this same strategy to all of them: Each
will be successfully being-in-itself, having its qualities by virtue of itself,
insofar as the others are effectively kept apart from it (in the extreme
case, insofar as they don’t exist). This proviso will be fulfilled by the
somethings’ all being finite: To the extent that the somethings’ being is
limited, they can be thought of as separated off, as irrelevant to each
other. To that extent, each can be “master of its own domain,” such as it
is.13 I say “such as it is” because (as Hegel immediately comments) this

Brinkmann connects Hegel’s notion of an ihm Sein, of “presence in it,” to Aristotle’s

notion of actuality as the fulfilment of potentiality (Aristoteles’ allgemeine und spezielle
Metaphysik [Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1979], p. 226). To speak meaningfully of po-
tentiality, we must think of it not as permanently and solely potential, but as liable to be
actualized. To speak meaningfully of “being-in-itself,” we must think of it as being liable
to manifest itself externally, and thus constituting a concrete property of the something.
12 WL 5:134, sentences 1–3/GW 21:112,23–32/124.
13 I take Hegel to be saying not just that other beings aren’t here and aren’t now, so they
can be ignored. Space and time, as such, do not enter into the Logic. Rather, I take him
to be saying that because other beings’ being is limited, it has no “ultimate,” no lasting
or final relevance. The paragraph just given gives my interpretation of the following
68 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

new way of achieving being-within-self is a double-edged sword, for the

something, because it defends the something’s being-in-itself only by
limiting its being; or as Hegel puts it: through the limit, something and
other “both are and are not” (WL 5: 136/GW 21:114,14/127). He puts
this even more dramatically when he says that finite things “are, but the
truth of this being is their end. . . . [T]he being as such of finite things
is to have the germ of decease as their being-within-self: the hour of
their birth is the hour of their death” (WL 5: 139–140/GW 21:116,5–
12/129). This is the consequence of the limit, or “non-being,” that
secures what being (in the sense of being-in-itself) they have.14
The final point that Hegel makes about this finite something is that
although the limit enables the determinate being to exist “beyond,”

sentences, in which Hegel introduces the idea of “limit”: “In so far as the being-within-
self is the non-being of the otherness – an otherness that is contained in the being-within-self
but which at the same time has a distinct being of its own – the something is itself the
negation, the ceasing of an other in it. . . . This other, the being-within-self of the something
as negation of the negation, is its being-in-itself, and at the same time this supersession
is present in it as a simple negation – namely, as its negation of the other something
external to it. There is a single determinateness of both [the something and the other],
which on the one hand is identical with the being-within-self of the somethings, as
negation of the negation, and on the other hand, since these negations are opposed
to one another as other somethings, conjoins and equally disjoins them, as a result of
themselves, each negating the other: This determinateness is limit” (WL 5: 135/GW
21:113,2–15/125–126; emphasis added). I have found no commentary that focusses on
the specific text of this transition. If finitude seems obviously doomed from the start, as
a solution to the problem that Hegel is addressing, this is not necessarily an objection
to Hegel’s procedure. He is simply seeking to be thorough.
14 Robert Pippin interprets Hegel’s talk of the finite being’s inevitable “decease” as mean-
ing that, at this point in the conceptual development, “there is no way conceptually to
assign any permanent structure to any thing, and therefore the only consistent overall
thought of being at this stage is the thought of the radically unstable, the impermanent,
as incapable of maintaining itself as such, and so as always ‘passing away’” (Hegel’s Idealism
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], pp. 192–193). I think it is more plau-
sible to interpret Hegel’s remarks about finitude in the context of the issue – which
I have traced through the entire text starting with “Something” – of how something
could have its quality by virtue of itself, alone. Pippin’s interpretation has Hegel making
a rather external, negative point about the epistemological poverty of the categories
so far developed, whereas my interpretation has him making a specific, internal point
about the nature and content of those categories, a point that, consequently, does more
to motivate the detailed development of Hegel’s argument in “Determinate Being.” In
general, I have the impression that Pippin’s concern to avoid Taylor-like metaphysical
interpretations of the Logic (in this chapter of his book, see his comments on pp. 177
and 199), and his consequent attempt to find a purely epistemological argument in the
book, may have caused him to underestimate the book’s relevance to the philosophy
of mind, the will, and freedom. I show in section 3.22 how we don’t need to deny the
book’s ontological substantiveness in order to avoid Taylor’s way of interpreting that
substantiveness.
 reality, freedom, and god 69

apart from, its other, the limit, too, is an other, in relation to the de-
terminate being: The limit is “the middle between the two of them in
which they cease . . . as the non-being of each of them it is the other
of both” (WL 5: 137/GW 21:114,21–24/127). But this means that in
search of the opportunity to be itself, the determinate being has once
again become dependent on an other. So that “the something, which
is only in its limit, . . . separates itself from itself and points beyond it-
self to its non-being, declaring this to be its being and thus passing over into
it” (WL 5: 137–138/GW 21:115,9–11/127; emphasis added). I will ex-
plain this conclusion in the next section. It is what Hegel describes
at the end of his section as the famous “contradiction of the finite”:
that “something . . . posited as the contradiction of itself, through which
it is directed and forced out of and beyond itself, is the finite” (WL
5: 139/GW 21:116,20–22/129; emphasis altered). Commentators have
found it difficult to interpret the “contradiction” that Hegel thinks he
has identified here, and some of their explanations of it have con-
tributed to Hegel’s reputation as an advocate of a doctrine that is the
exact opposite of common sense. I will try to show that we don’t need
to go to such extremes.15

.. The Finite and the Infinite

First, let us ask again: What does the limit in fact contribute to the project
of enabling something to be itself, by overcoming its relation to other?
It may in fact have reduced the significance of the other something by
successfully negating it (putting it “beyond” or outside the first some-
thing’s concern). But the price of this accomplishment is that it seems
to have laid on the first something a different kind of relation to other:
its relation to its limit. One consequence, as Hegel notes, is that, since
this new other is out of the something’s control, the “thought of the
finitude of things brings [a] sadness with it”; and another consequence,
resulting from the fact that finitude tends to be taken out of its larger,

15 Paul Guyer’s attempt at interpreting this “contradiction,” in “Hegel, Leibniz and the
Contradiction in the Finite,” is one of the most detailed and also (in the extensive use
that it makes of Hegel’s possible relationship to Leibniz) one of the most imaginative
attempts. However, it does not analyze the passage in which Hegel introduces the con-
cept of limit (see note 13), and it does not follow the problem of being-in-itself from its
inception, in the section on “Something,” to its solution in “Infinity,” as I do. As a result,
it pictures Hegel’s line of thought as simply opposing common sense (and Leibniz) on
the question of the existence of a multiplicity of finite things, rather than as attempting
to supersede them.
70 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Logical context and regarded as a simple given, is that “finitude is the

most stubborn category of the understanding,” the hardest to over-
come (WL 5: 140/GW 21:117,14–22/129). In fact, Hegel introduces
a new term for the limit when it is perceived as a constraint on the
something, as preventing it from being anything but merely finite: he
calls it “limitation” (Schranke; “limit” is Grenze).
So the first, essential aspect of the “contradiction of the finite” is
simply this: that when the “limit” was introduced, its point was supposed
to be that it would enable the something to have its quality by virtue of
itself, but instead of doing that, it has imposed another kind of “being-
for-other” on the something – a “being for the limit,” so to speak.
However, this failure of the finite – this intensified problem – in
fact brings the solution – namely, the infinite – into view. Hegel writes:
“In order that the limit which is in something as such should be a
limitation, this something must at the same time in its self transcend the
limit, it must in its own self [an ihm selbst] be related to the limit as
to something which is not” (WL 5: 143/GW 21:119,17–20/132; emphasis
added). This relation to the limit as to something that is not occurs in
what Hegel calls the “ought” (Sollen): In recognizing a higher vocation
than its finite characteristics, the something is related to its limit or
its limitation as something that doesn’t exist as fully as the something
could exist if it pursued that higher vocation. It relates to the limit
as standing in the way of its pursuit of this higher vocation; that is
why the limit is a “limitation” for it. The experience of having such a
higher vocation, in relation to which one’s finite nature is a limitation,
is the experience of “transcending” (literally: “going beyond”) “its own
self” (WL 5: 143/GW 21:119,25/132). To perceive oneself as facing
a “limitation” is already, Hegel suggests, to go beyond that limitation,
insofar as, in order to perceive oneself in this way, one must already
have some conception of what it would be like not to be constrained
by the limitation. And to have such a conception, Hegel implies, is not
to be fully “limited” or finite any longer, because it is already to be half
way to actualizing the conception of what it would be like not to be
constrained by the limitation.
Hegel makes it clear in his Remark on the Ought that one of the
things that his notion of the Ought – of a finite thing’s “going be-
yond its own self” – is meant to capture, is Kant’s conception of moral-
ity as rational autonomy. “The ought has recently played a great role
in philosophy, especially in connection with morality. . . . ‘You can, be-
cause you ought,’ . . . For the ought implies that one is superior to the
 reality, freedom, and god 71

limitation.”16 “Duty is an ought directed against the particular will,

against self-seeking desire and capricious interest. . . . The philosophy
of Kant and Fichte sets up the ought as the highest point of the reso-
lution of the contradictions of reason” (WL 5: 147–8/GW 21:123,25–
6/136). “In the ought the transcendence of finitude, that is, infinity,
begins” (WL 5: 145/GW 21:121,11/134; emphasis added), to which
Hegel then adds in the text itself (subsequent to the Remark) that “in
the infinite the spirit . . . rises to its own self, to the light of its thinking,
of its universality, of its freedom” (WL 5: 150/GW 21:125,7–10/138; em-
phasis added).17 Hegel has well-known objections, which he begins to
lay out in his Remark on the Ought and which I’ll discuss in 3.9, to
Kant’s and Fichte’s view of the ought as the “highest point,” but the
reason why the ought comes into Hegel’s discussion at all, here, is that
in its way, the ought nevertheless does point to the possibility of a finite
thing’s having its quality by virtue of itself by going beyond its finitude,
and thus it opens up the possibility of a solution of the problem that
the something and finitude could not solve: the problem of how some-
thing could have its quality by virtue of itself, rather than by virtue of
its relations to other things, and thus could have “reality.” Questioning
or abstracting from inclinations and drives, the process that is essential
to the moral attitude as Kant pictures it, is precisely a way in which a
being can conceive of, and perhaps pursue, a life that is not dictated
by its finite limitations – which (as Kant and Hegel agree) are initially
alien to it – and can thus be itself, have its quality by virtue of itself. The
“ought” is the authority that is exercised by such a conception. What
gives it authority, in contrast to the mere power that a desire or a drive

16 WL 5: 144/GW 21:121,31–1/133; “You can, because you ought” paraphrases statements

of Kant’s in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (translated by T. M. Greene and
H. H. Hudson [New York: Harper, 1960]), p. 46 and elsewhere.
17 The intimate connection, in Hegel’s mind, between true infinity and the task of ap-
propriating what is true, while criticizing what is mistaken, in Kantian philosophy is
especially evident in his early work, Faith and Knowledge (1802), translated by W. Cerf
and H. S. Harris (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977); see, for example, pp. 63, 113, 190 (TWA 2:
297, 352, 431). See also Philosophy of Right §135: “Knowledge of the will first gained a firm
foundation and point of departure in the philosophy of Kant, through the thought of
its infinite autonomy” (emphasis added); and §133A: “The merit and exalted viewpoint
of Kant’s moral philosophy are that it has emphasized this significance of duty.” Here,
Hegel repeats his endorsement, in the Logic, of the Kantian “ought” (which now appears
in the form of “duty”). Of course, his critique of the “ought,” in the Logic, corresponds
to his critique of “morality” in general, in the Philosophy of Right. And both are clearly
meant to be cases of “supersession,” of Aufhebung, in which the truth of the preceding
stage (the ought, or morality) is preserved through the criticism.
72 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

can have, is the fact that, if Hegel’s analysis of determinate being and
finitude is correct, it is only by pursuing a life that goes beyond its finite
limitations that the being can really have its quality by virtue of itself.
It may be surprising to find Hegel talking, in effect, about ethics and
free agency, in a context in which, up to this point, he has not referred
to human beings or even to living creatures, but has only been talking
about determinate “qualities” and about “finite” beings. (I pointed out a
corresponding surprise in one of Hegel’s “Remarks” on being, nothing,
and becoming, in 3.3.) Hegel isn’t suddenly “changing the subject”
from quality and finitude to the will and ethics. Rather, he is implying
that in connection with phenomena such as the will and ethics, and the
beings that are capable of them, we find qualities that can in fact be what
they are by virtue of themselves, rather than by virtue of their relations
to other beings. Thus, a being that is capable of going beyond its finite
quality by seeking a higher authority by which to be guided – a “self-
transcending” being – solves the problem that “something” and finite
being were unable to solve: It has its quality by virtue of itself, and thus
has the “reality” or “being-in-itself” that “something” and finite being
failed to have. It avoids the trap that the something’s being-in-itself fell
into – of turning out to be simply another being-for-other – because,
being infinite, self-transcendence isn’t “present in” the something in the
same way that an ordinary quality is. And because self-transcendence is
the being’s own self-transcendence, it avoids finite being’s problem that
its “limit” turns out to be just another “other” for it. By going beyond
its finite qualities, the self-transcending being is in charge of whatever
qualities it will now have: It has them by virtue of itself rather than by
virtue of its relations to others.18

18 Note that I have said only that freedom of the kind that Kant analyzes can solve the
problem that something and finitude could not solve; I have not said that only Kantian
freedom can solve it. Hegel, in fact, mentions other things besides moral agents that
“go beyond themselves”: stones that interact with acids, plants that grow and make
seeds, and sentient creatures that seek to overcome hunger, are all described by him as
responding to an “ought” of their own, thus going beyond finitude and (apparently)
becoming more nearly self-determining (WL 5: 145–6/GW 21:121–122/134–5). Like
Aristotle in the De Anima, Hegel emphasizes the affinities between human, rational
selfhood and sub-human forms of self-organization, and in this way, also, reduces the
sharp dualism of Kant’s conception of rational functioning. In doing this, of course,
Hegel and Aristotle do not eliminate selfhood, as many modern “naturalisms” do; rather,
they find it in a broader range of phenomena than Kant finds it in. (Indeed, to begin
with they find it, precisely, in phenomena! – as Kant does not.) In this passage, Hegel
anticipates patterns that he will develop in more detail in the Idea (see Chapter 5) and
especially in his Philosophy of Nature (Chapter 6).
 reality, freedom, and god 73

What qualities will the self-transcending being have? This, of course,

is the great question, to which most of the rest of Hegel’s philosophical
system, both in the Logic and in the rest of the Encyclopedia and the
Philosophy of Right, is – directly or indirectly – devoted.19 The goal of
the present part of Hegel’s analysis is simply to show that this self-
transcendence need not create a problematic dualism, of the sort that
it led to in Kant. I will say more in the next section about how it shows
this.

.. Infinity, Freedom, and Nature

When Hegel says that freedom’s “infinity” “transcends” finite qualities,
he is basically just following Kant, and thus he contradicts common
sense no more than Kant does. No doubt it is Hegel’s talk of the finite’s
“contradicting” itself that gives rise to the suspicion that he is reject-
ing common sense. But if it is understood in the way that I have been
suggesting we should understand it, that talk is not particularly myste-
rious. It is simply his way of describing the problem that it seems that
determinate being’s quality should be what it is by virtue of itself – it
seems as though determinate being’s quality should have “reality” – but
it turns out that when we try to articulate that reality as “something” or
as finite being, it fails to be something that the being has by virtue of
itself, and in that sense, it fails to be “real.” Only the quality of a self-
transcending being, of the kind that we have just been discussing, can be
real in that way.
But the important implication of all of this, in connection with our
initial issue of the relation between freedom and nature, is that there is
no such contrast between ordinary being (as in the being of nature), and self-
transcending freedom, as Kant supposed there was. Through the argument
that we have been examining, Hegel has shown that nature and freedom
are not opposed, in the way that Kant supposes they are, because any

19 Section 7 concludes my reply to Guyer’s critical account of Hegel’s argument for the
contradiction of the finite, in “Hegel, Leibniz and the Contradiction in the Finite,”
in which Guyer unfortunately examines neither the sections on “Quality” and “Some-
thing” in which Hegel spells out the problem that “Finitude” will try to address, nor
the sections on “Limitation and the Ought” and “Infinity” that help us to understand
Hegel’s descriptions of the contradiction of the finite by understanding what they are
pointing towards – understanding, in particular, that they are not pointing towards a
mere substance-monism, as Guyer seems to think. For more comments on the substance-
monism interpretation, see Section 3.22 below.
74 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

realm of being whatever must “pass over,” if it is to contain “reality,” into

the infinite, and thus into a realm of something very much like what
Kant calls freedom. That is, Hegel has shown that no realm of being is
fully intelligible, even as a realm merely of being, if we don’t impute to
it (at least) an implicit reference to freedom.20
The crux of Hegel’s argument for this dramatic thesis, clearly, is the
problematicness of determinate being’s necessary reliance on nega-
tion – on the quality of other determinate beings – to determine its
own quality. Hegel develops this problematicness into the interpreta-
tion of “limit” as “limitation,” and into the notion of the something as
going beyond itself, in the infinite. The problematicness itself is due
to the conflict between determinate being’s dependence on others,
for its determinate quality, and quality’s need to be something that ex-
ists, initially, by virtue of itself, or by virtue of the being that has it,
rather than by virtue of relations between that being and other beings.
It could be a surprise to those who take Hegel to have a low opinion
of particulars, as such, that he places such stress, in this argument, on
the intuition that something’s specific quality should be “its own busi-
ness” (that it should be a “being-within-self”: something that it has by
virtue of itself). I take this to be a genuine agreement, on his part,
with unsophisticated “common sense” – though of course the conclu-
sions that he draws from it hardly coincide with that sort of common
sense. The distinctive characteristic of his argument is that he combines
this agreement, this emphasis on “being-within-self,” with his account
of “negation,” which describes determinate beings as so intimately in-
volved with one another that infinity turns out to be the only way to
reassert the possibility that some of them might successfully have their
qualities by virtue of themselves. Thus the duality of “being-within-self,”
or being what one is by virtue of oneself, on the one hand, and negation,
or logical involvement with others, on the other hand, generates the
connection that Hegel is suggesting between merely being a specific
quality (by virtue of oneself) and being free: the connection being that
freedom, rather than being something that sets itself against being in the

20 Here I need to repeat the proviso that I made in note 18: that for Hegel, a greater
variety of things are capable of some kind of self-transcendence or freedom than Kant
imagines are capable of it. But it is certainly still true, for Hegel, that human freedom is
more complete, more fully developed, than the self-transcendence that is achieved by a
stone, a plant, or a non-human sentient creature. Thus, human freedom is necessarily
included in whatever Hegel says about the role of self-transcendence (the “Ought,” and
infinity) in solving the problem of how a being can have its quality by virtue of itself.
 reality, freedom, and god 75

sense of quality and thus also (for example) in the sense of “nature,” is
simply the fullest, most successful form of being – the only being that succeeds
in being what it is by virtue of itself. That is, rather than understanding
nature as the paradigm of being and (at the same time) as the simple
absence of freedom, as is commonly done and is preeminently done by
Kant, Hegel suggests that we should understand nature as embodying
the project of being (understood as involving being what one is by virtue
of oneself) which is fully carried out only in those parts of nature – above
all, human beings – that achieve freedom. Rather than being opposed
to (“normal”) being, then, freedom should be understood as the full
flowering of being: the only way in which being fully is.
This, then, is how Hegel responds to the problem that led Kant
to divide reality into two realms or standpoints neither of which can
(apparently) be understood from within the other. Kant took nature
to be a realm of finite, causally determined qualities such as those that
he calls “inclinations,” and he therefore thought that freedom, which
as he understood it involves a capacity for unlimited (as Hegel would
say, “infinite”) rational questioning, could only be located in a realm or
from a standpoint that is radically distinct from that of nature. Hegel
replies, through the argument that we have been studying, that finite
qualities such as inclinations (and the other finite natural qualities that
are thought to cause us to have those inclinations) are not fully real,
because they aren’t what they are by virtue of themselves, but only by
virtue of their relations to other things. Whereas, on the other hand,
infinite rational questioning or freedom – the ability to respond to an
“ought” – is whatever it is by virtue of itself. But for something to be
what it is by virtue of itself was an essential aspect of determinate being
itself, from the beginning of Hegel’s analysis of it. Hegel referred to it
as the determinate being’s “reality” or its “being-within-self.” So what an
“infinite” being achieves is what every being was supposed to achieve, but
what – as Hegel’s analysis of the something and its other, and of finitude,
showed – no non-infinite being does achieve. This is how free beings are
the fullest, most successful, or – briefly – the most real kind of being.
As Hegel writes in summing up his idea of infinity, “It is not the finite
which is the real, but the infinite” (WL 5: 164/GW 21:136,9–10/149;
emphasis added). But what this means for Kant’s original problem is
that the realm of natural determinism, which Kant sets up as separate
from and independent of the realm of freedom, is, by comparison with
the latter realm, less (successful in being) real. Therefore, the problem
of reconciling natural determinism with freedom – taking these as two
76 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

competing supposed realities – is a problem that does not arise in the first
place. The realm of nature is not real in the same way that the realm
of freedom is real; in the competition between these two supposed
realities, the realm of freedom wins and nature loses. So there is no
need to set them up as parallel realities or equally valid standpoints.
This should also explain why I said that Hegel is saying that no realm
of being is fully intelligible, even as a realm merely of being, if we don’t
impute to it (at least) an implicit reference to freedom. No doubt there
could “be” a world or a universe that contained no free beings. But for
the being of this universe to be fully intelligible, as “reality,” it must be
understood as pointing to the possibility of such beings – which, when
and if they appear, will render the being of that universe more com-
plete than it is in their absence. According to Hegel’s argument, “mere
being,” containing no such reference to freedom, is (comparatively)
incomplete and unreal.
Lest readers should conclude that Hegel simply denies any reality to
finite beings, I must immediately add that Hegel is also going to insist
that infinity does not have its reality independently of finite being – that
true infinity “is only as a transcending of the finite” (WL 5:160/GW
21:133,36–37/145–146) – so that however unreal finite being may be
when taken by itself, it is nevertheless an indispensable aspect of the ulti-
mate reality. I will explain this relationship in the next section.

.. Spurious Infinity and True Infinity

Hegel spells out the contrast between an interpretation of freedom (like
Kant’s) that opposes it to finite being (and nature), and one that instead
interprets freedom as the fullest flowering of being (and nature), in
his immediately following discussion of the difference between what he
calls “spurious” (schlechte) infinity and what he calls “true” infinity – that
is, between an infinity that is simply set over against what is finite, and
an infinity that instead is understood as the finite’s surpassing of itself.
Hegel points out that if we take infinity to be something that is simply
opposed to finite things, we get the paradoxical result that infinity is
itself finite: The finite things that are opposed to it, constitute a limit to
it, and thus make it finite. This kind of “infinity” is, of course, the one
that Hegel calls “spurious”: It doesn’t really succeed in being infinite.
The absence of any positive relationship between this infinity and finite
things also means that, when it is viewed from the point of view of
the finite thing that seeks to measure up to it, we get the endless
 reality, freedom, and god 77

“progress to infinity” – “and so on to infinity” (WL 5:155/GW 21:129,

8/142), for which the infinite is a perpetual “beyond” (WL 5:156/GW
21:130, 6/142).
One instance of this infinite progression to which Hegel objects espe-
cially strongly is Kant’s postulate of immortality, in the Critique of Prac-
tical Reason (Ak. 121–4), which Kant introduced in order to give the
individual soul unlimited time in which to improve towards its (finitely
unreachable) goal of perfect moral goodness. Hegel views this as a
denial of finitude, which fails to transcend finitude, because even with
infinite time, it’s unclear how a mixed creature of reason and inclina-
tions, such as we are, can be expected to bootstrap itself up to pure
rational goodness (see PhG 3:458–459/§623–624).
Understood as they are by the spurious infinity, the finite and the infi-
nite stand face to face with each other, connected at most by the finite’s
endless striving to measure up to the infinite. This is, in general, the rela-
tionship between Kant’s two “realms,” the phenomenal and the noume-
nal – the dualism that I have suggested Hegel is trying to overcome. If
infinity related to the finite in this way, that dualism would clearly not
have been overcome. But Hegel has in mind a different conception of
infinity and thus a different conception of the relationship between the
finite and the infinite. “True” infinity, as Hegel explains it, and as I will
now lay out, is reached by superseding both the “finite” (as it is under-
stood in the light of the “spurious” infinite) and the spurious infinite
itself, in such a way that they cease to be simply opposed to each other.
1. The finite is superseded precisely in the way that we have analyzed
in 3.4 and 3.6. Hegel sums up the argument with his statement
that “finitude is only as a transcending of itself” (WL 5: 160/GW
21:133,34/145). Finite qualities can be what they are by virtue of
themselves, rather than being defined by their relation to others,
only insofar as they go beyond their finitude. To the extent, then,
that a quality fails – as it does at every moment of the “progress to
infinity” – to transcend itself, to go beyond its finitude, it fails to
be. (More precisely, I suggest: It fails to be “fully.” It is, but it isn’t
real: It fails to be what it is by virtue of itself.) So finitude must be
superseded, in order to be real.
2. The spurious infinite, on the other hand, is superseded by the obser-
vation that
infinity is only as a transcending of the finite; it therefore essentially
contains its other and is, consequently, in its own self the other of
78 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

itself. The finite is not superseded by the infinite as by a power existing

outside it; on the contrary, its infinity consists in superseding its own
self. (WL 5: 160/GW 21:133,36–2/145–146)

Since an “infinity” that is over against and flatly opposed to the finite
is limited by the finite and thus fails to be infinite, true infinity must in-
clude the finite by being the finite’s superseding of itself. To the extent
that the finite transcends itself, the finite is, and to the extent that the
finite transcends itself, infinity is. Rather than being, on the one hand,
and arriving (or, in fact, not arriving) at the goal of pure freedom (and
goodness), on the other, the finite something constantly comes (fully)
into being by creating pure freedom and goodness, by transcending it-
self. Both the finite and the infinite come (fully) into being through,
and thus they both are, the same process. Though infinity transcends,
goes beyond, the finite, it does so not by replacing the finite with some-
thing totally different, something entirely “beyond” the finite, but by
being the self-transcendence of the finite itself. The true infinite, the true
“beyond,” is in the finite rather than opposed to or simply “beyond” it.21

21 In his detailed critique (in his Sein und Schein. Die kritische Funktion der Hegelschen Logik
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980]) of Hegel’s argument for true infinity, Michael
Theunissen raises four main objections: (1) Hegel’s statement that the finite “disap-
pears” in the infinite, can’t be reconciled with his immediately prior statement that the
infinite is the finite’s “affirmative determination” (WL 5:150/GW 21:125,34–37/138),
so this transition involves no genuine “return to self ” (Theunissen, p. 281; cp. p. 293).
(2) From being, initially, a “goal,” in Hegel’s discussion, infinity becomes a mere “pro-
cess” (Theunissen, p. 278). (3) Theunissen thinks that Hegel presents the “under-
standing” as achieving a self-discovery, in his argument, which “reason” transforms into
a mere “eternal recurrence of the same” (Theunissen, p. 295). (4) Theunissen regards
Hegel’s image, for true infinity, of the circle (as opposed to the linear “spurious in-
finity”) (WL 5:164/GW 21:136,2/149), as implying this same eternal recurrence (the
“always-being” of this “motion back into itself ” [Theunissen, p. 297]), an “unproduc-
tive rotation” (Theunissen, p. 296), rather than the true “presence” that Hegel claims
for true infinity (WL 5:164/GW 21:136,25/149). In (1), Theunissen seems to over-
look Hegel’s argument that the finite can achieve reality only by going beyond itself.
The finite “disappears” in the sense that its pretence of independent reality is aban-
doned, but it is “affirmatively determined” in the infinite insofar as the infinite is this
self-supersession of (and achievement of reality by) the finite. (2) Hegel certainly does
identify true infinity as a process, but Theunissen doesn’t make it clear why it should
remain a “goal,” in a sense that’s not compatible with its being a process, as well. (3) I
don’t see where Theunissen finds this contrast between the understanding and reason,
in Hegel’s presentation, or how reason does what Theunissen says it does. (Perhaps his
suggestion, here, depends upon what he says in [1], to which I have replied.) As for
(4), I take it that the circle can symbolize presence insofar as, unlike an infinite line, it
can be fully surveyed and taken in at a glance. Theunissen doesn’t explain why it must,
instead, be understood in the Nietzschean way, as a frustrating recurrence of the same.
 reality, freedom, and god 79

Within his discussion of the two versions of infinity, Hegel refers to

Kant only negatively, as promoting the spurious infinity’s frustrating
“progress to infinity.” Viewed in a larger perspective, however, what
Hegel sketches here as a way of avoiding that frustration is also – and
is surely intended by him as – a way of solving the problem of how to
understand the relation between freedom and nature (which Kant be-
queathed to us in the form of his two “worlds” or two “standpoints”),
and thus how to preserve what is true and irreplaceable in Kant’s con-
ception of freedom. I explained in 3.8 how Hegel’s account of the
“contradictory” nature of determinate being and of finitude enables
him to describe infinite freedom not as something merely opposed to
finite being, but rather as finally successfully carrying out the project,
implicit in determinate and finite being, of being’s having its quali-
ties by virtue of itself. The true infinity is simply the version of infinity
that recognizes that this is what infinity is about – that because infin-
ity “is only as a transcending of the finite,” it is not simply opposed to
the finite, but rather is intimately connected to it. This, of course, is
what Hegel wants us to understand about the relation between freedom
and nature, as well: that freedom is not simply opposed to nature, but
rather it fulfils a project that is implicit, but unfulfilled, in nature itself
(the project of being’s having its qualities by virtue of itself), so that
believing in the reality of freedom does not diminish the importance
of nature in any way. Nor does believing in the importance of nature
diminish the reality of freedom. Each exists by virtue of the other; they
both come (fully) into being through, and thus they both are, the same
process.
The quandary that Kant left us in, in which freedom pertains to a
world or a point of view that seems to be unintelligible from the world or
the point of view of nature (and the reverse, of course, is also the case),
is thus resolved, but without eliminating the essential features either of
nature or of freedom, as Kant understands them. (That is, of freedom
in sense [iii], as I defined it in the Introduction to this chapter.) Hegel
does not try to persuade us to be satisfied with our finite, more or less
natural, desires or character traits, as the substance of our selfhood,
as David Hume does. Nor does he try to persuade us that those finite
features are negligible or false, by comparison with the true reality of
infinite freedom, as Kant and Plato (on one familiar interpretation of
each of them) try to persuade us. Instead, Hegel shows us that the reality
of those finite features is intimately (if only implicitly) connected to the
80 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

reality of infinite freedom, and vice versa, as long as both are seen in
the context of the question of how a being can have its quality by virtue
of itself.22

.. Empiricism, Dualism, and True Infinity

With regard to empiricism or naturalism – that is, with regard to views
like David Hume’s – Hegel endorses what he calls their “great princi-
ple, that what is true must be in actuality and must be there for our
perception” (EL §38R). “Philosophy,” Hegel says, “like empiricism, is
cognizant only of what is,” and he directly contrasts this “what is” with
“that which only ought to be, and for that reason is not there” (ibid.).
This is his agreement with empiricism’s and naturalism’s rejection of
Kant’s dualism, which Hegel and empiricism/naturalism oppose with
the principle that there can only be one primary “actuality” – that a
duality of actualities, as in the two Kantian worlds or standpoints, is un-
intelligible and therefore unreal. However, Hegel does not conclude
from this great empiricist/naturalist principle that there is no truth
whatever in the “ought” – that “what is” is simply facts about nature,
or subjective experiences, as such. What is true in the “ought” is that
“in the ought, the transcendence of finitude – that is, infinity – begins”

22 Søren Kierkegaard writes: “The bad infinite is the [Hegelian] Method’s hereditary
enemy; it is the Kobold that moves whenever a transition is about to take place, and
prevents it from taking place. The bad infinite is infinitely tenacious of life; it can be
vanquished only by a breach of continuity, a qualitative leap. But then it is all over
with the Method, the facile nimbleness of its immanence, and the necessity of the tran-
sition” (Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F. Swenson
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941], p. 302; compare p. 103). Kierkegaard
does not address Hegel’s argument – which is supposed to establish the necessity of the
transition to true infinity – that the “bad infinite” fails to be infinite because it is limited by
the finite, to which it is opposed. This is an internal critique of the “bad infinite” (not an
intrusion, that is, by Hegel’s supposed “Method”), so anyone who proposes to criticize
Hegel’s critique of the bad infinite needs to address it. (Nor does Kierkegaard show any
sign of recognizing the role that Hegel has argued that infinity needs to play, in achieving
the “reality” of determinate being – which is what makes it vital for philosophy to identify
an “infinity” that succeeds in being infinite.) These limitations of Kierkegaard’s under-
standing of Hegel allow him to have great fun describing the term “bad infinity” (schlechte
Unendlichkeit) as a stick that Hegel cherishes because he can browbeat potential critics
with it (p. 302). For a detailed response to Adolf Trendelenburg’s critique of Hegel’s
argument to true infinity, which was one of Kierkegaard’s main sources of philosophical
inspiration in his well-known critique of Hegel, see Josef Schmidt, Hegels Wissenschaft
der Logik und ihre Kritik durch Adolf Trendelenburg (Munich: Johannes Berchman, 1977),
pp. 123–135.
 reality, freedom, and god 81

(WL 5: 145/GW 21:121,11–12/134; emphasis added), and this infinity

is indispensable because no finite thing is what it is by virtue of itself,
and thus no finite thing has reality. This latter argument, the argu-
ment of “Quality,” which empiricism and naturalism do not appreciate,
shows what the “ought” has to contribute: why it enters into the dialectic
at all.
Hegel’s goal, therefore, is to explain how infinity (the truth of the
“ought”) can “be in actuality and be there for our perception” – how
it need not take the form of a second, separate actuality. He does this
by explaining that since such a second, separate actuality would in any
case be finite, as a result of its opposition to the first actuality, true in-
finity can only be the finite’s transcendence of itself: “infinity is only
as a transcending of the finite,” so that the finite’s “infinity consists in
superseding its own self” (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,33–2/145–146). The
result is that “the infinite determinacy which reason seeks [because only
the infinite is real] is in the world [it is in finite things and perceptions],
though it is there in a sensible, singular shape, and not in its truth”
(EL §38A; emphasis added). The infinite reality, the “truth,” of those
finite things and perceptions is their own self-transcendence, rather than
something opposed to and separate from them. Thus we can have in-
finity, and the reality that depends upon it, without giving up reality’s
(actuality’s, the world’s) intelligible unity. We can have the infinite, self-
determining reality that is implicit in Kantian autonomy without giving
up the unity – on which empiricism and naturalism correctly insist –
of “what is.” What is true in Kant’s noumenal “world” is preserved by
the principle that “finitude is only as a transcending of itself” (WL
5:160/GW 21:133,34/145), and what is true in Kant’s phenomenal
“world” is preserved by the principle that “infinity is only as a tran-
scending of the finite” (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,36–37/145–146). What
is true in empiricism and naturalism, on the other hand, is preserved
by the fact that there is only one fundamental process, one “actuality,”
here – namely, the true infinite, which is the self-transcendence of the
finite. What is abandoned, on Kant’s side, is the assumption (embodied
in the “spurious infinity”) that finitude and infinitude, as polar oppo-
sites, cannot and must not include one another, so they must inhabit
separate “worlds” or “points of view.” What is abandoned on the side of
empiricism and naturalism are the assumptions that the finite is unprob-
lematically real, and that nothing infinite (transcendent) can be “in the
world” in any way – that is, the same “spurious infinity” assumption that
82 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Kant makes, that the finite cannot include the infinite and the infinite
cannot include the finite.23
Thus by challenging, and projecting an alternative to, the “spurious
infinity,” Hegel captures what seems to be true both in Kantian tran-
scendentalism and in the empiricism and naturalism that are the main
sources of opposition in modern philosophy to Kantian transcendental-
ism. It is no wonder, then, that in the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel describes
true infinity as “the fundamental concept of philosophy” (EL §96R).

.. How Hegel’s Position Relates to “Compatibilism”

and “Incompatibilism”
Hegel makes it quite clear that his account of freedom differs in an
important way from Kant’s account of it, insofar as he objects to Kant’s
dualism of phenomena and noumena or appearances and things-in-
themselves, and readers who approach Hegel from the point of view
of Anglo-American philosophy sometimes assume that if Hegel does
not accept Kant’s conception of the status of freedom – which is often
taken as a paradigmatic “incompatibilist ” account, due to its assumption
that freedom is not directly compatible with the determinism that Kant
and many others ascribe to nature – then Hegel must be essentially in
agreement with the “compatibilist ” view of freedom or responsible action
that is characteristic of the British empiricist tradition, beginning with
Hobbes and Hume. As I explained in 2.4, empiricist compatibilism
asserts that it is reasonable to hold a person responsible for her actions
even if those actions were fully determined by natural laws and prior
states of the world, as long as the chain of determining causes operated
through her character, and not through distorting media such as outright
coercion or mental illness. This is thought to be sufficient to make the
action “her own,” and thus one that she is responsible for.24

23 If the reader hears echoes, in my talk of the finite’s including the infinite and the
infinite’s including the finite, of Hegel’s famous or infamous account of “contradiction,”
in the Doctrine of Essence, that is not at all accidental. Hegel in fact says that “the
infinite . . . is contradiction as displayed in the sphere of being” (WL 6:75/GW 11:287,30–
31/440; emphasis added). I will explore this connection in Chapter 4.
24 See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 21, paragraphs 1–4; David Hume, A Treatise of
Human Nature, Part III, sections 1 and 2, and Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding
and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1902), pp. 80–103. An influential statement of substantially the same position
is A. J. Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity,” in his Philosophical Essays (London” Macmillan,
 reality, freedom, and god 83

As I explained earlier, however, though Hegel rejects Kant’s “two-

worlds” approach, he doesn’t accept empiricism’s account of the na-
ture of the “one” reality. His argument that the finite, as such, is unreal,
would be fatal to that account. Nor does Hegel accept empiricism’s
identification of the person’s will (the locus of responsibility) with
certain character traits; on the contrary, Hegel (like Kant) thinks it’s
crucial that a person can question every character trait, like every desire,
to determine its rational credentials, its “authority” (see Chapter 2), so
that the ultimate locus of responsibility for Hegel (as for Kant) is this
capacity for questioning, and the “transcendence,” the “going-beyond”
that it makes possible.25 This is something that only a reality that em-
bodies “infinity” can provide for. So by virtue of its differing conceptions
both of the one reality and of the will, Hegel’s “compatibilism” – if we
choose to call it that – is quite different from Hobbes’s and Hume’s, and
our “taxonomy” of positions on the the nature of freedom and the will
needs to be more complex than the usual Anglo-American taxonomy.
As I said earlier, Hegel aims to capture what is true both in Kant’s position
(namely, the idea that the will must be capable of going beyond finite
inclinations) and in the empiricist or naturalist position (namely, the
idea that reality cannot be fundamentally and irreducibly bifurcated).
That being the case, it is no surprise that a taxonomy that focusses only
on the two views that Hegel seeks to combine and go beyond, will not
accurately reflect what he’s up to.

.. True Infinity, “Striving,” and “Actuality”

Some readers who focus on Hegel’s highly visible objections to Kant’s
postulate of immortality and to the forever unfilfilled “striving” to which
that postulate seems to point have strong objections to the “true” in-
finity that Hegel advocates. They reply that there is nothing inherently
objectionable in the idea of striving for something ultimate that one
cannot attain. Michael Inwood, for example, writes that “Hegel (like
Aristotle) found it hard to accept that much valuable activity consists
in striving for goals, which, once attained, are less valuable than the
striving: Climbers enjoy trying to reach the top of mountains more

1954), pp. 271–284. It is Ayer who adds the qualification about mental illness (via the
example of kleptomania).
25 See note 21 in Section 2.4 for citations of recent writers about freedom and responsibility
who agree with Hegel in rejecting both incompatibilism and the empiricist conception
of volition.
84 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

than they enjoy being at the top of them; we enjoy research and dis-
covery more than the contemplation of our results, etc.”26 And Søren
Kierkegaard asserts, against Hegel’s conceptions of true infinity and ac-
tuality, that “the ideal of a persistent striving is the only view of life that
does not carry with it an inevitable disillusionment” (which will ensue
when “systematic finality” reveals itself as less than fully satisfying).27
To begin with Inwood: Hegel’s point is, first, that if the task is, pre-
cisely, to go beyond finitude – to accomplish the presence of the infinite
(of being-in-itself) in the finite – then finite ‘steps in that direction’
don’t even begin to do this. If there was no hope of our actually reaching
the top of the mountain, or of our research leading to actual results,
our striving in those areas would cease to be intelligible. And second,
a better explanation of the satisfaction that we find in striving for goals
that we may not be able to attain could be that the striving itself is the
accomplishment – that this activity is itself, in an important respect, our
goal. (As Aristotle says, “the end is sometimes an activity, sometimes a
product beyond the activity” [Nicomachean Ethics 1094a4], and virtue,
in his view, is an example of the first kind, not the second.) If there
really is striving, of this sort, in the world – as there clearly is, if our
whole discussion has any point at all – then the infinite is, in fact, present
in the finite. The presence of striving that truly is aimed at an infinite
goal, is, in effect, the presence of that goal – in (and at the same time
going beyond) the finite. It is present only by virtue of our efforts, so the
Hegel/Aristotle view in no way suggests that we can relax and merely
“contemplate our results.” But it is present, and Kant’s and Inwood’s
mistake is that they don’t recognize – their intellectual structures don’t
allow them to recognize – this kind of presence.
This is also the answer to Kierkegaard’s prediction of “disillusion-
ment”: There is no need to fear disillusionment about the presence
of our efforts, and thus of the infinite itself, in our world. Our efforts,
and thus the ideal that they pursue, are not only an ideal, they are also
actual; and insofar as they are actual, the infinite is actual. Kierkegaard
views Hegel’s system as an intellectual construction, remote from lived
experience. But the notion of the finite’s going beyond itself, on which
Hegel relies throughout his system, is very much a description of lived

26 Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 210–211. The use
of the term “striving” to designate the relationship between the finite and the infinite
stems from J. G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge (1794–5), translated by Peter Heath and
John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 231; SW 1:261.
27 Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F. Swenson (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 110.
 reality, freedom, and god 85

experience, of real effort and real activity, and it’s precisely our expe-
rience both of the authority of ethics (epitomized in our sense that
there is an “ought,” to which we can be more or less attentive) and of
questioning about what ethics requires (which we find is not reducible
to the simple satisfaction of particular finite desires or opinions), that
Hegel relies on to convince us of this. (So that Kierkegaard’s other fa-
vorite complaint, that Hegel’s system lacks an “ethics,” is equally poorly
aimed. Hegel’s system is an “ethics,” to its very roots.)
Rather than rejecting “striving” in favor of “contemplation,” then,
what Hegel does is reinterpret striving as implying the effective pres-
ence of its goal, in reality: Striving (by finite beings) becomes the
effective presence of the infinity that it aims at, so that reality embodies
finitude by being finitude’s self-transcendence (the effective presence
of the infinite in it), rather than being merely finitude and its mere striv-
ing, or merely the transcendent, or merely the two of them, somehow
side-by-side.
The effective presence of the infinite in the finite constitutes what
Hegel later will call “Actuality,” which he will describe as “rational” (in
his famous saying, referred to in 3.1). The explanation that I just gave
of how this effective presence is our “striving,” and thus doesn’t elim-
inate the need for human effort, also explains why the “rationality of
the actual” does not eliminate the need for improving existing human
institutions. To the extent that those institutions are perverse or merely
random, they don’t embody human striving for the good and they
aren’t what Hegel calls “actual.” (I’ll explain this in more detail in 4.15
and 5.8.)
True infinity is also the answer to the issue that I posed in 2.2 about
whether the rationalism that Hegel shares with Kant involves what
amounts to “slavery” for the inclinations, and for the “particular” in
general – the slavery that the young Hegel accused Kant’s rationalism
of involving, in his ironical comparison (in “The Spirit of Christianity
and Its Fate”) between the “Shaman of the Tungus” and “the man who
listens to his own command of duty” and is “his own slave.” Insofar as
the inclinations, and the “particular” in general, are finite, Hegel’s ar-
gument shows that they are “unreal.” This does not by any means imply,
however, that they can simply be “ruled” (or “enslaved”). For according
to true infinity, the infinite “is only as a transcending of the finite” (WL
5:160/GW 21:133,36–37/145–146), so that we must be able to trace,
in the “inclinations” and the “particular” (indeed, in nature), the way
in which they transcend themselves. Hegel does this in great detail in
his “Doctrine of the Concept,” which I will discuss in Chapter 5, and
86 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

his Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit, which I will discuss in

Chapter 6.

.. True Infinity and the “Negation of the Negation”

Having spelled out (in 3.8–3.12) the way in which true infinity ap-
pears to solve the problem of the relation between freedom (in the
demanding, Kantian/Hegelian sense of the word) and being or na-
ture, let us go back for a moment to the root of infinity and free-
dom, for Hegel, which is in the idea of negativity, or the negation
of the negation (discussed in 3.5), and see how true infinity articu-
lates what was implicit in that earlier distinctively Hegelian move. As
I explained, Hegel’s “negation of the negation,” which he presents as
an account of how determinate being goes beyond its determination
by what is other than it and achieves “being-within-self” or, in effect,
self-determination, implies that self-determination is properly under-
stood only when it is understood as both other than and the same as
other-determination, insofar as in the second negation, the “negation of
the negation,” self-determination is itself understood through the same
relationship of contrast, or “negation,” that is characteristic of its oppo-
site, other-determination. Thus the very way in which Hegel first intro-
duces the idea of the self-determining subject (“the beginning of the
subject” [WL 5:123/GW 21:103,27/115]) implies major reservations
about the notion of a sovereignly independent self that has nothing
to do with what is other than it. Hegel doesn’t say, as Nietzsche and
post-modernists often seem to say, “This ‘self’ is a mere illusion! There
is no such thing!” Rather, he says: Selfhood is inseparable from unself-
hood, self-determination from other-determination – where we must
note well the difference between “reducible to,” which Hegel certainly
does not assert, and “inseparable from,” which he does assert. The exact
nature of that inseparability is what Hegel is trying to spell out for us.
Now what happened in “Finitude,” which immediately follows the
section that introduces this fundamental idea of “negativity,” is that
Hegel presented a possible way of insulating each “something” from
the others, thus allowing it to be self-determining – that way being the
“limit,” the boundary between them. When it became clear that the limit
was, in effect, a new “other,” still preventing self-determination, Hegel
moved to the idea of the something’s going beyond itself, through the
ought and (Kantian) freedom, which presented the opposite problem
that the finite that was “gone beyond” constituted yet another limit
 reality, freedom, and god 87

and “other.” Here, Hegel showed how Kant’s conception of freedom

finitizes and thus destroys itself by setting itself in sheer opposition to
finitude and other-determination. The solution, as we have seen, was
to spell out an identity-in-difference between the finite and the infinite,
each as achieving its reality through the other. But what this identity-
in-difference does is simply to show, in a more articulated way, how
selfhood and otherness, self-determination and other-determination,
are inseparable. The finite products of other-determination achieve
reality only insofar as they go beyond themselves in the manner of
self-determining Kantian autonomy; but at the same time, that auton-
omy achieves reality only by being the self-transcendence of the finite
products of other-determination. Selfhood and self-determination are
consistently thinkable only as categorially inseparable, in this way, from
unselfhood and other-determination. Which is precisely the same point
that I just described him as already making through the notion of the
negation of the negation (“negativity”).
Thus there is no conflict, in principle, between Hegel’s description
of true infinity, in the Encyclopedia Logic, as “the fundamental concept
[der Grundbegriff] of philosophy” (EL §96R), and his description of
“negativity,” in the first edition of the Science of Logic, as “the abstract
foundation [Grundlage] of all philosophical ideas and of speculative
thought in general” (GW 11:77,30–32). These are simply – as the word,
“abstract,” in the second quotation, indicates – more and less worked-
out, more and less “concrete” versions of the same thing.
Indeed, it seems pretty clear that this same idea also constitutes the
structure of “being with oneself in one’s other” or “coming to oneself
in one’s other” that Hegel identified, in a lecture, with true infinity (EL
8:199/149, §94A), and in numerous places with freedom (PR 7:57,
§7A; cp. EG 10:34–36, §346,A). The “oneself” part is the finite thing’s
success in being what it is by virtue of itself, rather than by virtue of its
relation to others, by going beyond its finitude in the manner suggested
by the “ought” and Kantian freedom. But this “oneself” is “in its other”
in that it is the finite thing – rather than a “power existing outside” the
finite thing, as in the spurious infinity – that accomplishes this going-
beyond. The essence of freedom and of true infinity is this non-dualistic
“going-beyond”: the finite’s self-transcendence in (or into) itself rather
than into or by means of something other than itself.
If we have a reasonable understanding of this idea, now, we are in a
position to draw together, in a preliminary way, quite a lot of Hegel’s
mature thinking. Always remembering that more developed ideas are,
88 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

in Hegel’s view, “truer,” so we are still only at the beginning; but there
is no point in ignoring major implications of this beginning until later,
when they are already clear enough by now to enable us to remove some
ongoing major misunderstandings of what Hegel is up to.

.. Substance and Subject

With regard to the resolution of Kant’s problem about freedom that (in
3.9 and 3.10) I have been describing Hegel as achieving in the Doctrine
of Being, readers may wonder how it relates to Hegel’s later treatment
of the relationship between “actuality” or “necessity” and freedom, in
the latter part of the Doctrine of Essence (the second part of the Logic),
which makes much more extensive reference to “freedom,” as such. As I
will show in Chapter 4, the concept that survives the criticism of Quality,
Quantity, and Measure, in the Doctrine of Being, and which accordingly
forms the core of the new concepts of Shine, Reflection, Actuality and
Necessity, in the Doctrine of Essence, and which consequently underlies
the culminating transition to “freedom,” in the Concept, is negativity.
As I explained in Section 3.13, negativity also contains the gist of true
infinity. As I’ll explain later in this chapter (3.24), true infinity runs
into problems that lead to the lengthy rethinking process that makes
up the rest of the Logic. But Hegel clearly thinks that despite its need for
rethinking, true infinity has brought out implications of negativity that
are permanently important; it’s because of those implications (which
I’ve been outlining in the last several sections) that he is able to refer
to true infinity as “the fundamental concept of philosophy” (EL §96R).
When negativity is (more or less explicitly) the underlying theme of
the transition from Essence to Concept, from necessity to freedom,
true infinity is (by implication) also very much present. Thus, negativity
certainly, and true infinity indirectly, are crucial for understanding the
transition to freedom at the end of the Doctrine of Essence.28 How this
works out in detail, I’ll explain in Chapter 4.

28 The problematic character of the Essence/Concept transition when taken “by itself,”
without reference to negativity and true infinity, is made especially evident by Charles
Taylor’s imaginative but confessedly unsuccessful attempt at reconstructing it without
any such reference, in Chapter 11 of his Hegel (1975). One might also wonder what the
relationship is between the answer that I claim Hegel is giving, in “Quality,” to Kant’s
metaphysical dualism, and his elaborate critiques of Kantian dualism about motivation,
and of other aspects of the Categorical Imperative, in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the
 reality, freedom, and god 89

Besides being essential to the transition from necessity to freedom,

negativity and true infinity are, not surprisingly, equally essential to
the same transition, at the end of “Essence,” under another and even
more famous rubric, as the transition from “substance” to “subject.” Hegel
announced the necessity of this transition in the Preface to the Phe-
nomenology of Spirit (3: 23/PS §17), where he says that it can only be
demonstrated by the full development of philosophical “science”: that
is, by his Logic. But how Hegel thinks he demonstrates, in the Logic,
the necessity of this transition – that is, of the transition that is funda-
mental to his “idealism,” as such – is one of the great mysteries of Hegel
scholarship. I know of no careful commentator who even seems confi-
dent in her account of how the argument is supposed to work. Klaus
Düsing says that Hegel does not really show “why the supersession of
the separation of substances [at the end of Essence] must in fact be
a thinking, and not just an essentially existing self-relationship.”29 And
Rolf-Peter Horstmann presents Hegel’s view that (as Horstmann puts
it) “thinking and being are one and the same, or that only thinking has
being,” not as something for which Hegel presents an argument, but
simply as a “conviction” of Hegel’s, which underlies all of Hegel’s work
and which “he never felt any need to question.”30
I think Hegel presents an argument for his idealism, rather than just
assuming its truth, and I think the outline of this argument can already
be seen in his arguments for negativity and for true infinity. What Hegel
argues there is that being can have its qualities by virtue of itself, only to
the extent (1) that it negates its original negation (its dependence on
others for its quality), and (2) that it goes beyond its finite determina-
tions, in the manner suggested by the “ought,” and becomes free. Now
if, as it seems reasonable to suppose, determinate being is a prototype
of what Hegel later calls substance, and if, as Hegel says, “the begin-
ning of the subject” is already present in the “something” that negates its
negation (that is, that negates determinate being’s dependence on the

Philosophy of Right. I think that these critiques are mutually complementary. I do not
think that one finds, in these latter texts, a response to Kant’s basic metaphysical dualism
that is as focussed and as cogent as the response that I have been extracting, here, from
the Logic. This must be because in his other critiques, Hegel presupposes the basic
points about Kantian thinking that he elaborates here.
29 Klaus Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1976), p. 231
(emphasis added).
30 Rolf-Peter Horstmann, “Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Phi-
losophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), vol. 4, quotes from pp. 265 and
266.
90 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

other for its quality) (WL 5:123/GW 21:103,27/115; emphasis added),

then negativity itself – the negation of the negation, which is (1) –
already takes us, in principle, from Substance to Subject. It shows that
Substance (or in this case, determinate being) cannot be what it is by
virtue of itself without becoming Subject (that is, the “something”).
The argument for true infinity, (2), develops this second negation into
the idea of going beyond finite limitations, in the manner suggested
by the “ought,” and thus into freedom. Though no explicit reference
has yet been made to thought, as such, it isn’t difficult to imagine that
when this notion of going beyond finite limitations through freedom is
fully developed, this going-beyond will turn out (as it does in fact turn
out, in the Philosophy of Spirit) to involve thought, and that in that way,
thought will be shown to be more fundamental than being, or it will be
shown that, as Horstmann puts it, “only thinking has being.”
The next several chapters of the present book will follow precisely
that development – in which the transition from Essence to Concept
is, of course, one major step. But even in its germinal form, in the ar-
gument for negativity and the argument for true infinity, the argument
that I have been outlining makes Hegel’s “idealism” seem much more
plausible than it seems when we encounter it in apparently dogmatic
(“unquestioned”) formulations such as Horstmann’s. For if I’m right,
Hegel is not denying that determinate being, finite being, substance,
or nature has a certain kind of “reality.” What he is asserting is that the
reality that determinate being, finite being, substance, and nature do
have depends upon their relationship to negativity, infinite freedom,
subjectivity, and spirit, since determinate being, finite being, substance,
and nature by themselves lack the reality that would be constituted by
their having their quality by virtue of themselves. Hegel’s notion that
“reality” in the full sense should involve having one’s quality by virtue of
oneself, rather than merely by virtue of one’s relation to other things, is
sufficiently widely shared and sufficiently plausible in its own right that
it is clearly not just a disguised version of his much more distinctive ulti-
mate conclusion that substance is subject. Thus there seems to be good
reason to expect that Hegel’s official transition from substance to sub-
ject and from necessity to freedom will be far more intelligible if we see
it as relying, in significant part, on the arguments for negativity and true
infinity. And since the transition from substance to subject and from
necessity to freedom is the most prominent one in the Logic as a whole,
and perhaps (in view of its manifestly far-reaching implications) even
in the System, understanding it promises to make the System a much
more plausible set of doctrines than it is commonly thought to be.
 reality, freedom, and god 91

.. Modernity and “Metaphysics”: Hegel and His Predecessors

To those who are inclined to view the transition to the Concept as
a transition from the “old-fashioned” interest in ontology (being and
substance), or “metaphysics,” that is apparently a prominent feature
of the Doctrines of Being and Essence, to a more “modern” interest in
something like “discourse,” let me say four things. (1) The “Objectivity”
portion of the Doctrine of the Concept seems, on the face of it, quite
ontological, as does the Philosophy of Nature. (2) Subjectivity and its im-
plicit “discourse” do not enter the Logic all at once, in the the Concept;
rather, the “beginning of the Subject” is already present in the intro-
duction of negativity, in the chapter on Quality, as we have seen. So
there is no single watershed transition, from the “old-fashioned” to the
new, “critical,” “post-Copernican,” non-“metaphysical” view. (3) Some-
thing like discourse is undoubtedly a major interest of the Logic, inso-
far as negativity and freedom implicitly involve language, thought, and
(according to the “Idea”) intersubjectivity. But (4) the discourse that
the Logic concerns itself with always incorporates negativity’s and free-
dom’s vertical dimension, of “going beyond” the other-determined or
the finite or the particular (or, reading it from above, of the “concretiza-
tion” of the universal), and by virtue of that dimension, this discourse
continues to have ontological implications, in which Hegel clearly con-
tinues to be very interested, as we see from (for example) the texts
mentioned in (1). If Hegel viewed pre-Kantian metaphysics as merely
asking the wrong questions and assigning the wrong subject matter to
philosophy, he could have dealt with it much more summarily than he
does. When determinate being becomes negativity, and when substance
“becomes subject,” negativity and subject contain the truth of determi-
nate being and of substance, rather than replacing them with entirely
different domains of interest. The way in which Hegel presents quality,
quantity, substance, necessity, and so on (classical metaphysical topics)
as systematically intertwined with negativity, freedom, and subjectivity
(supposedly “modern” topics) – indeed, the way in which he presents
the “beginning of the Subject” as the “negation of the negation,” thus
analyzing it as the iteration of what initially is a clearly “metaphysical”
category (see 3.5) – makes it clear that however critical Hegel may be
of philosophy prior to Kant, he does not see it as a mere catalogue of
mistakes. And if that is the case, it seems inappropriate to interpret the
transition from Being and Essence to the Concept as a transition sim-
ply from the “wrong” (or “obsolete”) conception of philosophy to the
“right” (or “modern”) one.
92 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Just as Hegel finds significant truth in the finite (inasmuch as the true
infinite is the self-transcendence of the finite), so he also finds signifi-
cant truth in all of the major contributions to the Western philosophical
tradition, and for a similar reason – namely, that truth (though generally,
of course, only partial truth) is what achieves influence in human life
and thought, insofar as human life and thought do transcend merely
finite “error.” And Hegel thinks that a sign of philosophical depth is
the ability to find that (partial) truth in doctrines that may, at first sight,
seem obscure and wrong-headed. In pursuit of this sort of depth, he
forgoes the gesture – which was popular in modern philosophy prior to
himself (cf. Descartes, Bacon, Hume), and was again popular in such
twentieth-century philosophies as logical positivism and existentialism –
of dismissing the work of all or large categories of one’s predecessors,
including (for example) mythological and religious as well as “meta-
physical” thinkers, as “fundamentally flawed” and not worthy of serious
attention. I submit that in forgoing this gesture, Hegel demonstrates a
combination of modesty, respect for his fellow humans, and love of the
truth, which deserves to be honored and emulated.31

.. Reality and Ideality, “Realism” and “Idealism”

Confirming my suggestion that the outline of his argument for his
“idealism” is already present in his argument to true infinity, Hegel con-
nects his account of true infinity directly with the concepts of “ideality”
and “idealism.” “Determinate being,” he says, “has reality . . . but the
truth of the finite is rather its ideality” (EL §95R; emphasis added),
which is simply the fact that, for the reasons that we discussed in 3.4–
3.6, “the finite [, as such,] has no veritable being” (WL 5: 172/GW
21:142,2/154). What is “ideal” [ideelle] is, Hegel says, “the finite as
it is in the true infinite – as a determination, a content, which is dis-
tinct but is not an independent, subsistent being, but only a moment”

31 This is not to say that Hegel’s respect for his fellow humans was perfect. He had little
sympathetic understanding of animistic magic or (consequently) of black Africa, and
his appreciation of Asian philosophy (which he tended to categorize as religion, as
opposed to philosophy) was limited. It is quite possible that his thinking in these cases
was affected by racism; it was certainly not as imaginative as it could have been. And he
said things about the psychology of women that were certainly not imaginative. What
I think we should emulate is not the limits of his imagination, but rather his refusal to
categorize any school of philosophy, or any religion or “metaphysics,” as not worthy of
serious attention for the truth that it may contain.
 reality, freedom, and god 93

(WL 5: 165/GW 21:137,25/149–150; emphasis added), a part or an

aspect of the true reality that is true infinity. He then uses this sense of
“ideal” as the basis of his definition of “idealism”: “The proposition that
the finite is ideal [that is, that it’s only a moment of true infinity] con-
stitutes idealism” (WL 5: 172/GW 21:142,36/154). Hegel denies that
there is any important contrast between “idealism,” in this sense, and
“realism” (ibid.), and his reason for denying this is his earlier conclu-
sion (discussed in 3.7) that “True infinity . . . is reality in a higher sense
than the former reality which was simply determinate; for here it has
received a concrete content. It is not the finite which is real, but the
infinite” (WL 5: 164/GW 21:136,5–10/149; emphasis altered). I have
explained how it is only through true infinity that a quality can be “real”
in Hegel’s initial sense that it is what it is by virtue of itself. True infinity
is “reality in a higher sense” because it actually achieves what the initial
moment that was called “reality” aimed at: namely, to enable its owner to
be what it is by virtue of itself, and not by virtue of its relations to others.
So, returning to the notion of “ideality,” the assertion that the finite is
“ideal” (in that it’s merely a moment of true infinity) is equivalent to the
assertion that true infinity is “real,” in this “higher sense” that it succeeds
in doing what the initial moment of reality had aimed at. So “idealism”
does not conflict with “realism,” when each is applied to the proper
item – “idealism” to the finite, and “realism” to the true infinite.32
By now it should be clear – as I indicated at the outset would be
the case – that what Hegel calls “idealism” is very different both from
Bishop Berkeley’s (as Hegel calls it) “subjective idealism,” according
to which all finite things except minds are composed of ideas that are

32 The systematic connection between “reality” (as Hegel defines that term) and “idealism”
(as the doctrine that “the finite has no veritable being”) is not taken into account in
much of the lively recent discussion of the precise nature of Hegel’s “idealism,” which
consequently operates with concepts of “reality” whose connection to Hegel’s own use
of that term is unclear. Thomas Wartenberg, for example, thinks that the important
sense in which Hegel is an idealist is “because he believes that concepts determine the
structure of reality” (“Hegel’s Idealism: The Logic of Conceptuality,” in F. Beiser, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], p. 103);
and Edward Halper thinks it useful to describe Hegel as an idealist because “all the action
in Hegel’s system belongs to the ideas. . . . Hegel does indeed see thought alone as real”
(“The Idealism of Hegel’s System,” The Owl of Minerva 34 [2002–2003]: 20). Neither
author makes any reference to Hegel’s account of what he calls real or Realität. Kenneth
R. Westphal’s summary of what he calls Hegel’s “ontological idealism” is unusual in that
he does collect and interpret Hegel’s key statements about the relation between Realität
and infinity (Hegel’s Epistemological Realism [Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1989],
p. 142), though what he finds plausible or promising in Hegel lies elsewhere.
94 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

located in minds, and from Kant’s “transcendental idealism,” accord-

ing to which the mind imposes major features (the categories and the
forms of intuition) on the world. In contrast to these idealisms, Hegel’s
“idealism” simply insists that finite qualities, as such, are unreal, and
that they achieve reality only by going beyond themselves in a way that
is characteristic of free subjectivity (or, if you like, “mind”). Hegel chose
the words “Idea” (which I’ll discuss further in Chapter 5) and “ideal”
because of their connection to Plato’s and Aristotle’s “idea” or “eidos,”
which, like his own “Idee,” are not located “within” any mind, but rather
designate the intelligible aspect of what exists. In arguing that finite qual-
ities are mere “moments” of true infinity, Hegel has argued that they
become fully intelligible (as “reality”) only insofar as they transcend
themselves, or become truly infinite. Their “ideality” – their status as
moments of true infinity – is thus their intelligibility or their reality. That
is why Hegel finds the Greek-derived term “ideality” (and, eventually,
“Idea”) an appropriate way of designating what he is driving at.
Next, Hegel proceeds to claim that every genuine philosophy is an
“idealism,” in the sense that it agrees that the finite has no veritable be-
ing (WL 5: 172/GW 21:142,37–2/154–155)! In the ancient and mod-
ern philosophies that come to mind as possible counterexamples to this
claim, he says,

water, or matter, or atoms are thoughts, universals, ideal entities, not things
as they immediately present themselves to us, that is, in their sensuous sin-
gularity – not even the water of Thales. For although this is also empirical
water, it is at the same time also the in-itself or essence of all other things,
and these other things are not self-subsistent . . . but are . . . derived from
an other, from water, that is they are ideal entities.
(WL 5: 172/GW 21:142,14–21/155)

That is, since Thales regards water as the in-itself of everything else,
he treats things in general as transcending their sensuous singularity,
and becoming what they truly are, through their relationship with water.
The presence of such transcendence in an apparently purely material-
istic philosophy shows that materialism is not, as such, an anti-“idealist”
doctrine, if one interprets “idealism” in the way that Hegel is propos-
ing. Hegel’s assertion that water and matter and atoms “are thoughts”
is clearly not meant as an assertion that they are “in” any mind, as a
“subjective idealism” would assert. Rather, it is an assertion that water
and matter and atoms are non-empirical essences or truths that serve to
give greater reality, and in that sense to give “ideality,” to things as they
 reality, freedom, and god 95

immediately present themselves to us. But, widely agreed to though this

proposition might be, it is certainly not a trivial or an unimportant one,
insofar as it implies that things as they immediately present themselves
to us are less real than the transcending “in-itself” that explains them
and gives them full reality. By recognizing this fact, as they implicitly do,
materialist philosophies go a long way toward the sort of idealism that
Hegel is advocating, which (again) is the recognition that finite things,
as such, “have no veritable being” – that they are less real than things
that transcend their finitude (“ideal” things) are.
In this passage, we see one of Hegel’s anticipatory replies to Ludwig
Feuerbach’s and Karl Marx’s later complaints – complaints that, un-
fortunately, consistently ignore these anticipatory replies – that Hegel
assumes that “ideas” or “thought” or “theory” are superior to “sensation”
or “concrete social reality” or “practice.” Materialism itself, Hegel sug-
gests, has never been satisfied with pure immediacy, but always seeks to
go behind phenomenal experience and identify the higher reality that
is at work in it. To that extent, materialism agrees with Hegel that nei-
ther sensation nor social relationships nor practice can be taken simply
at face value. The disagreement between materialists and Hegel would
then have to be about the precise nature of the “higher reality” that is at
work, which Hegel identifies as true infinity, the free Concept, Spirit,
and so on, whereas materialism identifies it as Thales’s “water,” Democri-
tus’s “atoms” and “necessity,” Epicurus’s atoms and their unpredictable
“swerve,” or Marx’s “matter” and his Promethean leap from the realm
of necessity to the realm of freedom. The only way to decide which is
more plausible is to examine all of them in concrete detail.33 One can-
not simply dismiss one or the other as “metaphysical,” as “standing on
its head,” or as “confusing subject with predicate,” as Hegel’s materialist
critics tend to think they can do.34

33 All of the present book would be relevant to such a comparison. I will leave it to the
reader to consider Marx’s account of the higher reality that is at work, and whether it
is more or less successful than Hegel’s.
34 With Hegel, the dialectic “is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up
again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell”: Karl Marx,
Capital. Volume One (1867), at the end of “From the Afterword to the Second German
Edition,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978),
p. 302. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote that “We need only turn the predicate into the subject
and thus as subject into object and principle – that is, only reverse speculative philosophy”:
“Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy,” in The Fiery Brook. Selected Writings of
Ludwig Feuerbach, translated by Z. Hanfi (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), thesis 6,
p. 154.
96 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Even sophisticated contemporary interpreters of Hegel sometimes

follow in Marx’s footsteps on this issue. Michael Theunissen writes that
in Hegel, the “difference between existence in the world and conceptual
determination . . . [is,] as Marx would say, ‘mystified.’ The mystification
is based on the idea that the Concept could ‘overgrasp’ factual existence
[faktische Existenz], at least in the end, in just the same way that, from the
beginning, it overgrasps its own determinateness.”35 Neither Theunissen
nor Marx appears to have grasped Hegel’s analysis of the concept of
“reality” itself (which I explained in 3.4), with the result that they don’t
understand the role played by negativity and true infinity – and thus
eventually by the Concept, thought, and Spirit – in achieving this “real-
ity.” For Hegel, the “existence in the world” or the “factual existence”
that Theunissen refers to – like Feuerbach’s “sensations” and Marx’s
“concrete social reality” – is unreal insofar as it is merely finite. To crit-
icize Hegel’s idealism in a way that responds to his argument for it, one
would have to come to grips (at least) with his account of “reality,” and
the way in which it leads him to negativity and true infinity and thus to
the “ideality” of the finite.36

.. True Infinity and God

In his Introduction to the Science of Logic, Hegel described its topic
as, among other things, “the exposition of God . . . ” (WL 5: 44/GW
21:34,39–2/50). Readers who reject traditional theism sometimes seek
ways of interpreting Hegel’s theological language as not committing
him to finding any truth in the traditional notion of a transcendent deity.
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, for example, in his detailed revisionist com-
mentary (entitled Hegels Analytische Philosophie) on the Encyclopedia Logic,
describes Hegel as proposing a “radically immanentist [diesseitige] way
of reading religious or theological speech,” for which “’belief in God’
is . . . insight into [the] dependence of the individual’s humanitas, his

35 Michael Theunissen, “Begriff und Realität. Hegels Aufhebung des metaphysis-

chen Wahrheitsbegriffs,” in Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels, ed. Rolf-Peter
Horstmann(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 352; emphasis added.
36 As far as I can see, Theunissen’s ultra-subtle reading of these parts of Hegel’s text in
his major work, Sein und Schein. Die kritische Funktion der hegelschen Logik (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), esp. pp. 216–224, still fails to grasp the overall pattern and
significance of Hegel’s argument from “reality” to negativity and true infinity, and thus
to his idealism.
 reality, freedom, and god 97

individual knowledge and reason, on the universal culture of reason.”37

I find this interpretation appealing but unfortunately one-sided. It
would apply fairly well to much of what Hegel says about the individ-
ual’s relation to “objective spirit.” But an interpretation of Hegel’s phi-
losophy as a whole as “immanentist” quite clearly overlooks Hegel’s
argument that it is the finite’s “nature to be related to itself as
limitation . . . and to transcend the same” [über diesselbe hinauszugehen]
(WL 5:150/GW 21:124,27–29/138; emphasis added) (an argument
that unfortunately is stated less clearly in the EL). The truth that
Hegel finds in traditional conceptions of transcendence is that fi-
nite things achieve full reality only through their relationship to the
infinite: that “finitude is only as a transcending of itself” (WL 5:160/GW
21:133,34/145). If we ignore this latter truth, and Hegel’s argument
for it, we will never understand either Hegel’s conception of free-
dom, or his major investment of effort, during the last decade of
his life, in lecturing on the philosophy of religion. It is not an acci-
dent that explicitly “naturalistic” or atheistic interpretations of Hegel
ignore his critique of the finite, his conception of freedom as be-
ing with oneself in the other, and his lectures on the philosophy of
religion.38 The hostile critics in the 1820s who assimilated Hegel’s

37 Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels Analytische Philosophie. Die Wissenschaft der Logik als
kritische Theorie der Bedeutung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1992), p. 427–428. The most
influential interpretation of Hegel as an atheist is Alexandre Kojève, Introduction à la
Lecture de Hegel (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), translated by James H. Nichols as Introduction
to the Reading of Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 1969).
38 Kojève divides Hegel into the supposedly atheistic Phenomenology of Spirit, on the one
hand, and the supposedly theistic Logic, on the other hand, and rejects the latter in favor
of the former (Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, pp. 146–147). Stekeler-Weithofer is able
to interpret the Logic as “immanentist” – as simply rejecting the traditional conception
of transcendence – only by focussing, in his discussion of determinate being and true
infinity (Hegels Analytische Philosophie, pp. 118–135), solely on the highly condensed
Encyclopedia Logic, rather than on the Science of Logic, so that in his discussion, one finds
no mention of “relation to oneself against one’s relation to others,” the “contradictory”
nature of the finite, the “ought,” “going beyond oneself,” or “freedom.” Michael N.
Forster, in his defense of a purely “naturalistic” and “antitranscendent” interpretation of
Hegel’s account of the relation between God and man – a defense that is based mainly on
the Phenomenology but also discusses the Logic’s doctrine of “identity” – likewise does not
mention Hegel’s argument for the unreality of the finite (Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology
of Spirit [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998], pp. 197–204, quotes from pp. 197
and 198, n.13). Nor does Terry Pinkard mention it in arriving at the conclusion that
“Hegel seemed to be denying any kind of transcendence (at least in a non-trivial sense)
to God” (German Philosophy 1760–1860. The Legacy of Idealism [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002], p. 303). In his discussion of true infinity, Pinkard writes that “the
world as a whole is thus to be explained in terms internal to the world itself, not in terms
98 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

philosophy to “pantheism” made the same mistake of ignoring his

demonstration that the finite, and thus nature, is not self-sufficient,
but needs to go beyond itself. This, in Hegel’s view, is what is
true in traditional conceptions of transcendence and in traditional
religion.
What is false in traditional conceptions of transcendence and in tra-
ditional religion, Hegel brings out by criticizing a conception of God as
merely “transcendent” – as simply a “beyond.” Hegel’s most famous ver-
sion of this critique is his discussion of the “Unhappy Consciousness,”
in Chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit (3:163–177/Miller trans.,
§§207–230). In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel says that
in a conception of God as merely “transcendent” (my word and my scare
quotes), “the finite and the infinite only stand opposed in such a way
that the finite is duplicated” (VPRel 1:211/1:307) – which, of course, is
his objection to the “spurious infinity”: that in it, the “infinite” is in fact
limited by the finite that it excludes, and thus is, in fact, finite. Thus the
only true transcendence is one that includes the finite, in the manner
of true infinity (for which “infinity is only as a transcending of the fi-
nite” [WL 5:160/GW 21:134,36/145]).39 But this “inclusion” does not
reduce infinity to the finite, precisely because the finite achieves its own
reality only through this transcendence – through the infinitude that it
achieves. (“Finitude is only as a transcending of itself” [WL 5:160/GW
21:133,34/145].)
So it is only if, following the analysis of true infinity, we keep both
aspects in view at the same time – that God is transcendent, but that
the notion of transcendence must be reconceived, along the lines of true
infinity, in order to achieve what it aims to achieve – that we will be
able to see how Hegel simultaneously defends and criticizes traditional
theism.40 It is clear, I think, that in his well-known attack on Hegel’s

of anything ‘infinite’ and external to it . . . and especially not in terms of any supernatural
infinite” (p. 253). But although true infinity is indeed not “external to” the finite (as
the spurious infinity tries to be), it does “transcend” the finite [über diesselbe hinausgehen]
(WL 5:150/GW 21:125,29/138). And in the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel describes Spirit
as a “coming back out of Nature” (EG §381), to itself, and the “positing of Nature as its
[Spirit’s] world” (§384). We need to determine what Hegel means by these formulations,
and in the absence of other suggestions, it is reasonable to think that he means them
to capture what is true in the traditional notion of divine transcendence.
39 Thus, in one lecture transcript, Hegel is reported as saying that “Without the world God
is not God” (LPR, vol. 1, p. 308, n. 97).
40 When Paul Guyer compares Hegel’s argument for the possibility of going beyond fini-
tude, in EL §60R, to Descartes’s first argument for the existence of God, in his Third
 reality, freedom, and god 99

metaphysical theology, Ludwig Feuerbach did not understand this si-

multaneous defense and criticism, but rather assumed that if one speaks
of genuine transcendence, one must be speaking of something that is
radically opposed to (rather than “with itself in”) what it transcends.41
And in his “anthropotheistic” alternative to Hegel’s theology, Feuerbach
also clearly assumed both that the reality of finite things (unlike that of
God) is not a problem – that it can be taken for granted – and that there
is no important sense in which humans can or need to transcend their
finite nature. Like so many other post-Idealist thinkers, Feuerbach as-
sumed that Platonic or Kantian transcendence inevitably leads either to
a simple denial of finite existence or to an unintelligible “two-worlds”
supernaturalism – precisely the fate from which Aristotle and, above

Meditation (“Thought and Being: Hegel’s Critique of Kant,” in Frederick C. Beiser, ed.,
Cambridge Companion to Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], p. 204),
he overlooks the difference between Descartes’s orthodox theistic conception of God as
distinct and logically separable from the finite world, and Hegel’s conception of God as
true infinity, which “is only as a transcending of the finite” (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,36–
37/145–146). Charles Taylor makes the same mistake when he describes finite things
(for Hegel) as “vehicles” for the embodiment of cosmic Spirit (Hegel, p. 89) (see 3.22
for more on Taylor’s interpretation). And G. A. Cohen also makes it, in his thoughtful
account of the progression of thought from Hegel to Feuerbach and Marx, when he
says that for Hegel, “there is no reality in anything save insofar as it manifests the divine.
This means that the divine does exist here below, but also that nothing here below has
any reality of its own: it owes its reality to what is divine in it” (If You’re an Egalitarian, How
Come You’re So Rich? [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000], p. 93). Cohen
overlooks Hegel’s account of the failure of finite quality to be “its own,” to be what it is by
virtue of itself rather than by virtue of its relations to others, and the way in which true
infinity (which is not a “power existing outside” the finite [WL 5:160/GW 21:133,39–
1/145–146]) enables the finite, by going beyond itself, to achieve that “ownness.” Cohen
is very interested in Hegel’s doctrine that “without the world, God is not God” (p. 83;
see note 39), but he doesn’t trace that doctrine to its root in Hegel’s analysis of true
infinity. As a result, Cohen doesn’t see how Hegel’s theology criticizes the traditional
conception of transcendence, how Feuerbach and Marx fail to understand this critique,
and how Feuerbach’s and Marx’s critiques of Hegel consequently miss their target.
41 “The essence of theology is the transcendent; i.e., the essence of man posited outside man.
The essence of Hegel’s Logic is transcendent thought; i.e., the thought of man posited
outside man” (“Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy,” in The Fiery Brook.
Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, translated by Z. Hanfi [Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1972], thesis 12, p. 156 [emphasis altered] see also theses 16, 22, and 23; Kleine Schriften,
ed. Karl Löwith (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966), pp. 126–129). It is difficult to
imagine Feuerbach writing these sentences in this way if he had been properly aware
of Hegel’s doctrine that “the finite is not superseded by the infinite as by a power
existing outside it; rather, its infinity consists in superseding its own self ” (WL 5:160/GW
21:133,38–2/145–146; emphasis added), or of Hegel’s corresponding critique of the
conception of the infinite as the “beyond” (“It is only the spurious infinite which is the
beyond” [WL 5:164/GW 21:136,26/149; compare PR §22R]).
100 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

all, Hegel, in his account of true infinity, had striven to save (a revised
version of) Platonic and Kantian transcendence!
Here, then, is a preliminary summary of what Hegel’s argument ac-
complishes in theology. Just as, in superseding Kantian transcendental
idealism in the way that I explained in 3.10, Hegel preserves what is
true in the noumenal “world” and what is true in the phenomenal
“world,” what is true in Kant’s transcendentalism and what is true in
empiricist and naturalist critiques of Kant’s transcendentalism, so also
in superseding traditional theism, Hegel preserves what is true in the
traditional conception of transcendence and what is true in naturalist
critiques of the the idea of transcendence. What is true in the tradi-
tional conception of transcendence is that “finitude is only as a tran-
scending of itself” (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,34/145), and what is true
in naturalist critiques of the idea of transcendence is that to be fully
intelligible, a conception of something as real must explain how it re-
lates to whatever else is real, rather than simply positing two disparate
and unrelated kinds of “reality.” Hegel provides for the latter truth
by reconceiving the notion of transcendence along the lines of true
infinity, for which, rather than being “a power existing outside” the fi-
nite, “infinity is only as a transcending of the finite” (WL 5: 160/GW
21:133,36–37/145–146). The first proposition, that “finitude is only as
a transcending of itself,” presents a conception of transcendence that
captures an important truth in the religious and theological tradition
that is not appreciated by the Enlightenment critique of those tradi-
tions (or by the Enlightenment’s own pantheism, deism, atheism, or
“anthropotheism”), and this truth is protected by the second propo-
sition (that “infinity is only as a transcending of the finite”) against
Enlightenment naturalism’s objection that we can’t intelligibly postu-
late two disparate and unrelated kinds of “reality.” It’s because Hegel
combines a truth of traditional religion and theology (that finitude is
only as a transcending of itself) with a truth of Enlightenment naturalism
(that we can’t intelligibly postulate two disparate and unrelated kinds
of “reality”), into a coherent combination, that his doctrine is so un-
familiar that readers have great trouble simply identifying what it is. It
is neither traditional theism, nor traditional atheism, nor pantheism,
nor deism, nor Feuerbachian “anthropotheism,” because none of these
does justice both to theism and to Enlightenment naturalism in the
way that Hegel’s doctrine does. Grasping what Hegel’s doctrine is al-
ters one’s perception of the traditional alternatives – especially theism
and atheism, “religion” and “naturalism” – in a liberating way, because
 reality, freedom, and god 101

it suggests, contrary to deeply entrenched assumptions, that we can

actually do justice to both of these alternatives simultaneously.
Hegel’s argument does more than protect a revised version of divine
transcendence against charges of unintelligibility, by interpreting tran-
scendence (true infinity) as the self-transcendence of the finite. It also
gives us reason to regard this reinterpreted transcendence as real. This
reason is Hegel’s critique of finitude – his argument that finitude is only
as a transcending of itself. This is, in effect, a revised and more defen-
sible version of traditional arguments for the existence of God, and in
particular, of the “ontological argument.” Introduced by St. Anselm in
the eleventh century, used by Descartes and others, and criticized by
Kant, the ontological argument says that if God is defined as the sum of
all perfections, God must exist, for surely existence is a perfection and
non-existence an imperfection. Kant objects that it must be possible to
think about all of the properties of a possible thing without being com-
mitted to thinking of it either as existing or as not existing. So existence
is not a predicate like (say) power or goodness, and so it should not
be counted as a “perfection,” comparable to omnipotence or perfect
goodness. (In modern formal logic, this distinction between existence
and predicates is embodied in the difference between the existential
quantifier – which is used to make statements about existence and non-
existence – and predicate variables.) To Kant’s objection, Hegel replies,
in effect, that the combination of being and thought (or freedom), in
true infinity and in God (Absolute Spirit), embodies a developed under-
standing of what being or existence must be in order to be fully “real,”
so that it makes no sense to be “uncommitted” here – to consider it
an open question whether this God exists or not. If the argument of
the Logic works, this God is what most of all “is” (what most of all is
“real”), because that’s precisely what he (or it) has been constructed
to be (see EL §51R). God’s other predicates (if any) follow from “his”
being or reality, rather than his being or reality being tacked on to his
other predicates. This status of Absolute Spirit or of the Concept is clear
from the structure of Hegel’s system as a whole, in which “being” is the
first concept, so that all later concepts include being, superseded but
still present, within them. But it is especially clear when one sees the
role that “reality” plays in the argument to true infinity, that the pur-
pose of the Logic is to produce a developed conception of what is real,
so that if something that appears to be divine results from the Logic’s
argument, that divine thing automatically has to be real. Hegel’s argu-
ment for God’s reality resembles the “ontological” argument insofar
102 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

as it focusses on being as one of God’s essential features; it differs

from traditional versions of the ontological argument insofar as it
makes being God’s only essential feature, and derives his nature from
this being, rather than defining God as something else (the “sum of
all perfections”) and then arguing that his being follows from that
definition.42
In view of its subtlety, it’s no wonder that Hegel’s theological posi-
tion continues to be the subject of much confusion. It seems to me,
however, that to the extent that we can keep Hegel’s fundamental idea
of “supersession” (Aufhebung) – the picking apart of the genuinely false
from the genuinely true – before our minds, while considering this
issue – rather than supposing, as writers such as Feuerbach, Kojève,
and Stekeler-Weithofer do, that one must either simply accept “tran-
scendence, as such,” or simply reject it – then the point that Hegel is
making about “true infinity” and thus about true transcendence can help
us to escape some of the less fruitful features of the seemingly perma-
nent “war” between humanism and theology – both among those who
consider themselves Hegel’s sympathizers, and in the world at large. As-
suming, on the other hand, that we know in advance, from traditional
(pre-Hegelian) discourse, what must be meant by terms such as “tran-
scendence” or “God” or “Spirit” – or, correspondingly, that we know in
advance what the relevant doctrinal possibilities are (namely, in particu-
lar, “theism” and “atheism”) – will prevent us from understanding how
Hegel supersedes these possibilities, and thus will doom us to continue
stumbling back and forth between the traditional and (to many of us,
for good reasons) unacceptable alternatives.43

42 Hegel derives God’s love from his being, in the Doctrine of the Concept (see 5.2), and
God’s justice in the Objective Spirit section of the Philosophy of Spirit (6.10). On the his-
tory of the ontological argument and the nature of Hegel’s revised version of it, see
Dieter Henrich, Der ontologische Gottesbeweis: Sein Problem und seine Geschichte in der Neuzeit
(Tübingen: Mohr, 1967), and Kevin Joseph Harrelson, Hegel’s Defense of the Ontological
Argument for the Existence of God, dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2003. Unfortu-
nately, neither Henrich nor Harrelson identifies the way in which Hegel appeals to the
experience of the “Ought” in order to demonstrate to Kantians that they themselves
engage in the “elevation” that Hegel interprets as the “elevation to God” (cf. Harrelson’s
remarks in Chapter 4 about this “elevation”).
43 The most comprehensive account of the development of Hegel’s philosophy of reli-
gion, and of the early controversies about it is Walter Jaeschke, Reason and Religion.
The Foundations of Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990). A very helpful book on the development of Hegel’s thought about God up to
the Phenomenology of Spirit is Stephen Crites, Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of
Hegel’s Thinking (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Un-
 reality, freedom, and god 103

.. Two Contrasting Critiques of Hegel’s Theology:

Heidegger and Magee
We can sharpen our understanding further by seeing how the theology
that I find in Hegel’s account of true infinity stands up against a cou-
ple of noteworthy recent critiques. Following in the path of critiques
articulated by Pascal and Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger raises the ob-
jection, against the “god of philosophy” (where he has in mind Hegel as
well as Aristotle and Spinoza), that “man can neither pray nor sacrifice
to this God. Before the causa sui, man can neither fall to his knees in
awe nor can he play music and dance before this god,” and Heideg-
ger contrasts this philosophers’ god to the “divine God” (dem göttlichen
Gott; emphasis added) in relation to whom these traditional religious
actions do make sense.44 But what Heidegger says here doesn’t seem
to apply to Hegel’s truly infinite God, which is the self-transcendence of
(among other finite things) the finite gods – made finite by their various
more or less anthropomorphic traits (and their mutual exclusions) –
to whom we pray, fall on our knees, and so on. If religions embody,
to a significant degree, the efforts of their human adherents to go be-
yond their merely finite being, in order to be themselves and thus to
be “real,” and if the truly infinite God is the result of the more finite
religious institutions and “gods” going beyond themselves, in order to
carry out this project of their adherents’ going beyond their merely
finite being – which is a process that we can probably observe going on,
historically, in many actual religions, as their adherents become more
sophisticated about what they believe – and if the truly infinite God “is
only as a transcending of” (WL 5: 160/GW 21:133,36–37/145–146; see

fortunately, neither of these books deals with the Science of Logic. A number of recent
commentators use the term “panentheism” – meaning “the belief that the being of God
includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in him, but
that his being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe” (F. L. Cross and
E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. [London:
Oxford University Press, 1974], as cited by Raymond Keith Williamson, Introduction to
Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion [Albany: SUNY Press, 1984], p. 254) – to categorize Hegel’s
conception of the relation between God and the world. (Williamson provides a good
discussion and references in his Chapter 12.) “Panentheism” is meant to be contrasted,
of course, both to pantheism and to traditional theism. Since Hegel makes it clear that
the Logic, and true infinity in particular, provides his most systematic statement on the
relation between God and the world, it is clear that a full explanation of his panentheism
(if we choose to call it that) will depend upon a clarification of true infinity.
44 Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 72; German text, pp. 140–141.
104 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

3.9 and 3.17) these finite, traditional gods and religions and of their
adherents – then whatever we do in the way of prayer, falling on our
knees, and so forth, in relation to the finite gods of traditional religions,
we do, to some degree, in relation to the truly infinite God as well. So
we don’t have to choose, in an “either/or” fashion, between the (so
to speak) “old time religion” that Heidegger invokes, and the “god of
philosophy” – as long as the latter god is conceived in the manner of
true infinity, as the self-supersession of the finite (including the finite,
traditional gods). Respect for the one, when properly understood, will
entail respect for the other.
This thought is an important part of Hegel’s response not only to
critics such as Heidegger, but also to his “humanist” critics. If philosophy
ignored the finite gods of traditional religions – which at least transcend
nature, to some degree – and gave full respect only to nature’s finitude,
perhaps to art’s “infinite,” and perhaps to its own (completely non-
religious) “infinite,” it would not be possible for philosophy to achieve
the “transcending of the finite” that is the true infinity. Because infinity
“is only as a transcending of” what is finite, successful transcendence
involves respecting, experiencing, seeing the limits of, and superseding
(preserving while cancelling) all of the stages of transcendence, including
religion. (Chapter 6 will explain the way in which religion is a necessary
stage in the transcendence that is “Spirit.”) A “humanism” that fails to
respect, experience, supersede, and thus subsume religion, and instead
imagines that philosophy can simply stand on its own, will not achieve
true infinity. Being founded on the conception of true infinity, Hegel’s
philosophy does not make this mistake.45
There is a second point that needs to be made in response to
Heidegger’s critique of the “god of philosophy.” If we were to look
around in the history of religious expression for modes of expres-
sion that are most in keeping with the “god of philosophy,” and with
Hegel’s truly infinite God in particular, an obvious candidate would
be the actions and writings of “mystics,” whether Christian, Muslim,
Jewish, Platonist, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, or indigenous. Hegel ex-
pressed sympathy (for example) for Plotinus and Proclus, leading
Neoplatonist mystics and philosophers, for Meister Eckhart and Jakob
Böhme, Christian mystical writers, and for Jelaluddin Rumi, the great

45 This, I think, is Hegel’s most basic answer to Terry Pinkard’s question: “If we realized
that religion, too, could not fully give us what we needed, why then did we still need to
go to devotional service?” (German Philosophy 1760–1860, p. 304).
 reality, freedom, and god 105

Sufi poet and mystic – while always insisting that true mysticism, as ex-
hibited in these writers, is not mere “enthusiasm” [“Schwärmerei”], but
instead rests on a “rational” unification along the lines of his own uni-
fication of the finite and the infinite in true infinity.46 The mystical
traditions in general have a less anthropomorphic conception of God
or of the divine than traditional religions tend to work with, and the
relation to God or the divine that they speak of is correspondingly more
“direct,” and less mediated by traditional forms of worship, including
those that Heidegger mentions as appropriate to the “divine God” that
he has in mind. But there can be no doubt that the relations to God
or divinity that mystics experience and describe are at least as intense
and meaningful for the mystics as are those of the old time religion that
Heidegger refers to, for its adherents.
None of this, however, leads the mystics to condemn the more me-
diated, traditional ways of relating to God (still less to reject traditional
modes of worship as the misguided worship of “false gods”). Rather,
mysticism universally sees these traditional modes as containing at least
the germ of the truth to which it has a more direct access. Hegel does the
same thing in his discussions of religion in general, in which he exam-
ines the history and variety of religions as embodying in less-developed
ways what he finds most explicitly developed in Christianity (as he un-
derstands it), and in the philosophical conception of God that he ad-
vocates. And this is exactly what he should do, to be consistent with his
guiding idea of true infinity, for which the infinite, and thus the divine,
is not the opposite of the finite (because that would render it finite,
itself), but rather is the finite’s transcendence of itself. Heidegger’s
criticism of the “god of philosophy,” or of “ontotheology,” as he calls it,
and the similar criticisms articulated by Pascal and Kierkegaard before

46 On Plotinus and Proclus, see Lectures on the History of Philosophy/TWA 19:435–486; on

Böhme, Lectures on the History of Philosophy /TWA 20:91–119; on Meister Eckhart, VPR
1:248/1:347–348; on Rumi, EG §573R, TWA 10:386–387/308 and footnote. Hegel
identifies “the mystical” with his own “speculative” thinking (which is exemplified for
us in his conception of the unity of the finite and the infinite in true infinity), or with
“reason” [Vernunft] as opposed to the mere “understanding” [Verstand]: “When it is
regarded as synonymous with the speculative, the mystical is the concrete unity of just
those determinations that count as true for the understanding only in their separation
and opposition. . . . Thus, everything rational [Alles vernünftige] can equally be called
‘mystical’; but this only amounts to saying that it transcends the understanding” (EL
§82A/133; emphasis added). Hegel discusses the accusation of “Schwärmerei” in detail in
connection with Plotinus (Lectures on the History of Philosophy/TWA 19:440–445). For a
penetrating survey of the literature of mysticism in all of the major religions, see Aldous
Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (1944; New York: Harper, 1970).
106 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

him, have been received in many quarters with sympathy, but I won-
der whether those who find these criticisms persuasive have paid suf-
ficient attention either to Hegel’s conception of true infinity or to the
experience that seems to be shared by all the mystical traditions, of a
powerful relation to God or to the divine that is not restricted to, and
appears not to depend in any essential way upon the finite, literal instan-
tiation of, the sorts of activity that Heidegger mentions as characteristic
of a relation to the “divine God.” The mystical traditions seem to do
precisely what Hegel advises us to do, which is to retain the notion that
divinity transcends the finite, while not interpreting this transcendence
in the traditional way, as a polar opposition.
A second, very different line of criticism of Hegel’s theology regards
it not as too “philosophical,” but quite the reverse, as not truly “ratio-
nalistic,” and as not really deserving to be described as “philosophy”
at all. Glenn Alexander Magee identifies several important features of
Hegel’s metaphysical theology that he thinks qualify it as a part of the
“Hermetic” tradition – the occultist or theosophical tradition begin-
ning in the so-called Corpus Hermeticum around 100 ad and extending
through medieval and early modern writers such as (sure enough)
Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme – and he sees this entire tradition
as very much opposed to what he refers to as “rationalism.” Two of the
distinctive theological doctrines that Hegel shares with the Hermetic
tradition, according to Magee, and that appear to Magee to have no
“rationalist” credentials, are that:
1. God requires creation in order to be God.
2. God is in some sense completed or has a need fulfilled through man’s
contemplation of Him.47
Now, from Hegel’s account of true infinity – which Magee unfortu-
nately does not relate to the Hegelian doctrines that he identifies as
substantially identical to these Hermetic doctrines – we understand
that the reason why God “requires creation in order to be God” is that
a “God” who is diametrically opposed to the world (so that he doesn’t
“require” the world to exist) depends upon his opposition to the (actual

47 Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 2001), p. 13. Magee gives an overview, in his first two chapters, of the “Her-
metic tradition,” in which he includes Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme, and Rosicrucians,
Freemasons, and Swabian Pietists. Magee writes on p. 17 that if his book is successful,
“it will no longer be possible to treat [Hegel] as an ‘arch rationalist,’ as many still do.”
On the alleged difference between Hegel and “philosophy,” see pp. 8 and 120.
 reality, freedom, and god 107

or possible) world to define (“determine,” specify) what he is, and in

this way depends upon the world, and thus is not truly transcendent and
not truly God – so that the only way for God to be truly God, truly
transcendent, is by being the world’s self-transcendence rather than its
polar opposite. Hegel sympathizes with the Hermetic tradition insofar
as it appears to understand (in some way) that the conventional con-
ception of transcendence encounters this problem, and consequently
it tries to construct a relationship between God and creation that al-
lows God to be truly transcendent (“truly infinite”), by being creation’s
self-transcendence, rather than its polar opposite.
This explains why, according to Magee’s second point of compari-
son, God is “completed through man’s contemplation of Him.” This is
because it is the finite’s going beyond itself that constitutes God. True
infinity exists only as the finite’s going beyond itself, which occurs when
humans (and other parts of the world) achieve varying degrees of free-
dom, and thus ultimately “contemplate God.” (We’ll see in Chapter 6
how the finite’s going beyond itself ultimately takes the forms of art, re-
ligion, and philosophy – how the contemplation of God is the ultimate
stage in the constitution of God.) According to Magee, “This Hermetic
doctrine of the ‘circular’ relationship between God and creation and
the necessity of man for the completion of God is utterly original. It
is not to be found in earlier philosophy . . . and it is the chief doctrinal
identity between Hermeticism and Hegelian thought” (p. 10). It may
be the absence of anything quite like this doctrine in Plato, Aristotle,48
or Kant that persuades Magee that Hegel, and the Hermetic tradition
in general, cannot be regarded as “rationalist” in the same sense that
(presumably) Plato, Aristotle, and Kant count as “rationalists” (and per-
haps, indeed, as Magee’s repeated references to Hermetic and Hegelian
“magic” suggest, that Hegel and other Hermeticists should really be
counted, instead, as “irrationalists”).
But with the understanding of true infinity that we have now ar-
rived at, I think it is at least as plausible to suggest that by developing a
conception of reason that avoids the antagonistic dualisms that Kant’s

48 Hegel himself suggests that the gist of his own conception of spirit and of man’s role in
relation to spirit was anticipated by Aristotle. He does this by quoting one of Aristotle’s
discussions of God as contemplation (Metaphysics , 7, 1072b18–30) at the conclusion of
his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, EG §577 (compare EG §378). An illuminating
account of Aristotle’s distinctive theology (including this passage from the Metaphysics)
is given by C. D. C. Reeve, Substantial Knowledge. Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2000), Chapter 8.
108 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

rationalism (for example) falls into, with respect to practical reasoning,

freedom, and God, Hegel is in fact a more thorough-going rationalist than
his predecessors. Hegel shows how reason can understand its relation to
the “non-rational” inclinations, body, and world in a way that doesn’t –
unsuccessfully, and thus irrationally – “flee” from them.49 If Hegel’s
more thorough-going rationalism enables him to find anticipations of
his own progress, on this issue of the nature of true (rational) transcen-
dence, in writings that have been stigmatized as non-“philosophical”
or as “irrationalist,” that may reflect the unusual power of his insight
into the nature of rationality and transcendence, rather than his having
diverged from philosophy into irrationalism.50
That Hegel’s theology can be attacked in such radically opposed
ways – as too “philosophical,” and as not really “philosophical” at all –
suggests, at least, that it contains something rather distinctive that is not
readily grasped by conventional categories. In particular, Hegel clearly

49 Remembering his trenchant remark that “flight is not a liberation from what is . . . fled
from; the one that excludes still remains connected to [in Verbindung mit] what it ex-
cludes” (WL 5:196/GW 21:163,10–13/175; emphasis added).
50 Magee’s five remaining parallels between Hermeticism and Hegel (given on p. 13 of his
book) are: 3. They aim at “capturing the whole of reality in a complete, encyclopedic
speech”; 4. Man becomes empowered or perfected through this speech; 5. “Man can
know the aspects or ‘moments’ of God”; 6. There is an initial stage of “purification”
from false doctrines (in Hegel, this stage is the Phenomenology of Spirit); and 7. “The
universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies” (Hegel, according
to Magee, “rejects the philosophy of mechanism [and] upholds what the followers of
Bradley would later call a doctrine of ‘internal relations’” [p. 14]). Magee says elsewhere
(call this “8”) that “Hermeticism replaces the love of wisdom with the lust for power,
[and] Hegel’s system is the ultimate expression of this pursuit of mastery” (p. 8). To
begin with 3, it seems that any philosopher who does not believe that knowledge can be
founded on unmediated “givens” must aim for some sort of comprehensively circular
speech, though (of course) this project is not always as explicit as it is in Hegel. As for
4 and 5, they seem to be simply correlates of 1 and 2, and thus they don’t undermine
Hegel’s “rationalist” credentials any more than 1 and 2 do. The “power” or “mastery”
to which Magee refers here and in 8, belongs (for Hegel) to God, and humans do
indeed participate in it insofar as they go beyond their finitude and constitute God.
But it does not accrue to individual humans as such, and thus it doesn’t implement the
vision of “man as magus” (p. 7; emphasis added) to which Magee alludes. 6, the stage of
“purification,” seems to be an inevitable correlate of any ambitious cognitive enterprise;
compare, for example, Plato’s Republic i–ii, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics i, or Descartes’s
Meditations i. As for 7, presumably Bradley qualifies as a philosopher, rather than as an
irrationalist, so that even if Hegel did agree with Bradley on this point (which in fact he
doesn’t, because the theme of Hegel’s Logic is precisely the conflict between selfhood
and the interrelatedness of “negation,” so that the Concept’s and Spirit’s “identity” is
about diversity and separateness, and indeed about “mechanism,” just as much as it is
about relatedness), this would not make Hegel an irrationalist.
 reality, freedom, and god 109

requires us to abandon the common idea that rationality and mysti-

cism are mutually incompatible. (A sympathetically inclusive reading of
Plato would probably have the same effect.) I hope that my account of
true infinity has begun to reveal what constitutes the distinctive content
of Hegel’s theology, and why it produces such remarkably contrasting
objections. Any doctrine that aims to go beyond the established oppo-
sitions between theism and naturalistic atheism and between mysticism
and rationalism is inevitably going to encounter a remarkably disparate
array of objections.

.. Knowledge, Skepticism, and True Infinity

An objection that is often raised against Hegel’s theology, and against
his philosophy in general, for that matter, is that they seem to claim too
much knowledge, of too many things, to be “realistic.” There is a strong
inclination in modern religious thinking to regard the claim to “know
God” as foolishly grandiose: One can have “faith” in God, people say, but
not knowledge of God. As for philosophy, it has an ancient tendency –
beginning, perhaps, with Socrates’s critiques of his contemporaries’
claims to knowledge, and his disavowals of any knowledge of his own –
toward skepticism. In keeping with that tendency, Glenn Alexander
Magee (for one) describes Hegel’s doctrine as incompatible with true
“philosophy,” which Magee takes to be the love of or the search for
wisdom, as opposed to the possession of it.51 I will discuss the issue
between philosophy and skepticism in this section, and the issue about
knowledge versus “faith” in the next section.
It is often pointed out, in response to criticisms such as Magee’s,
that Hegel himself took a serious interest in skepticism (and espe-
cially in ancient Greek skepticism) in his early academic work in Jena,
as we can see from his essay “On the Relationship of Skepticism to
Philosophy” (1802) (TWA 2:213–272/Skep). And it is suggested, rea-
sonably, that Hegel found what he thought was an effective response
to this skepticism, and indeed that his Phenomenology of Spirit embod-
ies such a response (one that might justify his paying less attention
to the challenge of skepticism in his later work). My own suggestion
is going to be that the essence of Hegel’s response to skepticism can
be seen in true infinity, itself, so that that response pervades the entire

51 Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, pp. 8, 120.
110 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

systematic philosophy of which true infinity is the “fundamental con-

cept” (EL §95R).52
As I’ve explained, true infinity is the infinity that is the finite’s go-
ing beyond (superseding) itself, and that alone makes the finite, itself,
real, in the sense of being what it is by virtue of itself, rather than by
virtue of its relationships to other finite things. And Hegel explains this
“going beyond” to us by appealing to our experience of the “ought,” in
which we acknowledge the authority, over us, of something that goes
beyond our particular, finite inclinations, and that seems to offer us the
opportunity to be whole, to be “ourselves,” in a way that we cannot be if
we simply follow our strongest inclination. We acknowledge, that is, the
authority of selfhood. There is no point in acting – or, for that matter,
in believing – in a way that conflicts with this selfhood, because to do so
would diminish one’s potential reality, as oneself. A belief that conflicted
with selfhood would be, say, believing in “the first thing that popped
into one’s head,” as opposed to believing in something that one arrived
at after due consideration. If belief is a close relative of action – it does
seem (for example) that one is responsible for one’s beliefs, just as one is
responsible for what are ordinarily called “actions” – then it may seem
appropriate to apply Hegel’s remarks about the “ought” to beliefs as
well as to “actions” of the ordinary kind. It will become evident in the
Doctrine of the Concept, in particular, that Hegel does have in mind a
broad conception of selfhood as exhibited in responsible belief as well
as in responsible action (see 5.3); and it’s appropriate that he should
have such a broad conception in mind, since reasoning about belief
goes beyond initial inclinations and assumptions, and in that sense be-
yond “finitude,” in the same way that reasoning about action does.
Now, Hegel tells us that the actions and beliefs that respond to the
authority of selfhood (the “ought”) are, in effect, God. They are the
finite’s going beyond itself, which is the true infinity (to which Hegel

52 Important recent publications on Hegel’s relation to skepticism include: Michael N.

Forster, Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Michael
N. Forster, Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998); Hans Friedrich Fulda and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, eds., Skeptizismus und spekula-
tives Denken in der Philosophie Hegels (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1996); Kenneth R. Westphal,
Hegel’s Epistemological Realism (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989); and Kenneth R. Westphal,
Hegel’s Epistemology. A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2003). Michael Inwood gives a good brief statement of formal ways in which
Hegel’s system responds to the challenge of skepticism in his A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992), pp. 264 – 265. None of these works identifies the way in which, as I
will argue, Hegel’s response to skepticism pervades his entire system.
 reality, freedom, and god 111

will apply explicitly theological language later, in the Doctrine of the

Concept [see 5.2] and the Philosophy of Spirit, as well as in the Lectures
on the Philosophy of Religion).
How, I now ask, can one be skeptical about this God? As Hegel
says, “This infinite . . . is and is there, present, encountered” (präsent,
gegenwärtig) (WL 5: 164/GW 21:136,25/149). When the skeptic asks,
what authority do you have for this doctrine, this belief about “reality”? –
the answer is that this doctrine or belief begins as, simply, an articula-
tion of the experience of seeking authority for a doctrine or a belief, rather
than believing the first thing that comes into one’s head; and it then
goes on to draw consequences, from the phenomenon of our seeking
such an authority, for “reality”: that such a search itself creates a kind
or degree of “reality,” in the searcher, that wouldn’t otherwise exist (by
enabling the searcher to be what she is by virtue of herself, rather than
by virtue of her relations to others). So the skeptic’s question – “What
authority do you have for this doctrine?” – itself takes for granted some-
thing like at least the first step of the argument that it questions. The
skeptic may, by all means, try to articulate the experience in question –
the experience of seeking authority for a doctrine or a belief – in a way
that differs from Hegel’s articulation of it, but she can’t deny that there is
such an experience without depriving the discussion that she is having,
with Hegel, of any significance (since her intervention in the discussion,
which is her questioning of whether Hegel’s doctrine has any rational
authority, presupposes that there is such an experience).53 It seems,
then, that the only place where the skeptic can reasonably focus her
doubts is on the second step of Hegel’s argument, which is his account
of how the experience of seeking authority for a doctrine or belief cre-
ates a kind of reality, in the searcher and in the world that generated the
searcher, that wouldn’t otherwise be present there. Future discussion
might show how this second step can be reasonably undermined, but
for the present, I (for one) find it persuasive, for the reasons that I have
explained in this chapter.
If I have correctly identified the response to skepticism that is im-
plicit in Hegel’s account of true infinity, then it should be clear that

53 This response to skepticism would be similar to Aristotle’s response to a person who

denies the Principle of Non-Contradiction: “It is possible to demonstrate by refutation
even that [the denial of PNC] is impossible, if only the disputant speaks of something. If
he speaks of nothing, it is ridiculous to look for rational discourse . . . for in so far as
he lacks rational discourse, such a person makes himself like a vegetable” (Metaphysics
1006a11–15; emphasis added).
112 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel’s philosophy doesn’t simply reject, or simply “refute,” skeptical

objections. Rather, Hegel acknowledges skepticism as the legitimate
search for rational authority (for belief or action), and he builds that
search into his account of reality, and of how we (as seekers or knowers)
relate to reality. Reality is itself the search for rational authority (since only
something that seeks rational authority for its actions or beliefs can be
what it is by virtue of itself, and thus be fully real), and since this is what
reality is, we, as seekers of knowledge and rational authority, are the most
real things that there are. That is, we are the most real things to the extent
that we go beyond our initial inclinations toward particular beliefs or
actions – that is, to the extent that we go beyond our “finite” existence –
and seek that rational authority, and thus constitute something trans-
finite or (to use the traditional word) divine, which gives full reality to
the world of which it is the self-transcendence.
To deny that we can know this God would be truly a self-frustrating
endeavor. And to assert that in constructing a philosophy around this
thought, Hegel is making ridiculously grandiose claims, is to miss the
breathtaking simplicity of what he is doing. Following the example of
Plato, in his Republic and Symposium, Hegel is interpreting Socrates’s
search for knowledge of the Good – that is, for rational authority for his
actions and beliefs – as capable of, in effect, creating the ultimate reality
(since, as Plato puts it, to the extent that someone seeks such authority,
it becomes “possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue . . . but
to true virtue” [Symposium 212a; emphasis added], and to “become en-
tirely one” [Republic 443e; emphasis added]).54 In his famous denials
that he possesses “knowledge,” Socrates is certainly not denying that he
knows anything about his own search for knowledge, or (consequently)
that he knows anything about himself as a searcher for knowledge. What
Hegel claims for his philosophy is not that it grasps and knows the pos-
sibly infinite complexities of “reality” as it’s commonly thought of – that
is, of nature – but rather that it grasps the more fundamental “reality”

54 Obviously the interpretation of Plato that I’m gesturing towards, here, interprets the
“Forms” not so much as ontologically independent (and consequently as themselves
the ultimate “realities”), but more as metaphors that point to a process of going beyond
finite starting-points – a process that could enable a finite human being to achieve
“unity,” as a person, and thus (as the Symposium quote suggests) a kind of reality that
is, in effect, transfinite. This broadly Aristotelian or Hegelian “Platonism,” of which
I gave some more details in 2.6, would combine epistemological modesty with the
dramatic metaphysical implication of a higher “reality” in which humans themselves
are implicated – in Hegel’s terminology, a “truly infinite” reality – in the same way that
Aristotle and Hegel seem to combine them.
 reality, freedom, and god 113

that is not nature, but the way in which nature can and apparently does
go beyond itself in the “ought” and the search for knowledge, which
is to say, in selfhood (what Hegel describes as negativity, true infinity,
the Concept, and Spirit), and that this more fundamental “reality,” if it
exists, knows itself in a way that it can hardly deny.
Hegel’s notion, in both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Logic,
that we can follow the movement of the Sache selbst, the pure concepts
that make up reality itself, rather then merely the movement of “our
own thoughts” (which is what a skeptic might suggest that we are really
following), is only plausible in the context of his argument that reality
is constituted by the finite’s going beyond itself, so that we – as the ones
through whom (that is, through whose thoughts) the finite apparently
can go beyond itself – are intimately involved in the constitution of
reality, and can therefore know it as well as we know ourselves.55
That Hegel has in mind the kind of response to skepticism that I
have been describing can be seen from his introductory discussion in
the EL, in which he says that unlike the “understanding,” philosophy
contains the skeptical as a moment within itself – specifically as the dialectical
moment. But then philosophy does not stop at the merely negative result
of the dialectic, as is the case with skepticism. [Skepticism] mistakes its
result, insofar as it holds fast to it as mere, i.e., abstract negation. When
the dialectic has the negative as its result, then, precisely as a result, this
negative is at the same time the positive, for it contains what it resulted
from superseded within itself, and cannot be without it.
(EL §81A, TWA 8:176/131; emphasis added)

The negative “result . . . is at the same time the positive” because as a

“result,” it always has (at least) the positive moment of being, within it
(see 3.3). Skepticism is “a moment within” Hegelian philosophy in that

55 It might seem that Hegel’s argument is viciously circular, if his conception of reality
and true infinity, which ensures that he has this kind of access to the pure concepts that
make up reality, is itself arrived at only by assuming that he has this access. However, we
needn’t understand the Logic as depending upon such an assumption. Instead, we can
interpret it as proceeding hypothetically, interpreting our experience of talking about a
topic (“being”), and our experience of questioning the authority of our inclinations (in
the “Ought”), and finding that a cogent interpretation of these experiences leads us to
understand ourselves as constituting, through that questioning, the highest reality that
we can conceive of. Since this reality (when it’s fully developed, in the Encyclopedia) will
contain all the distinctions between “in itself ” and “for others,” essence and existence,
subject and object, outer and inner, and so forth, that humans have hitherto conceived
of, there is no reason for those humans to postulate something “external” to it or “truly
in itself ” that might differ from it and be unknown to them.
114 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

skepticism is the inquiring going-beyond, the search for rational author-

ity, which (as the “Ought,” in the “Quality” chapter of WL) dissolves the
finite, as such. But unlike skepticism as such, Hegelian “philosophy”
goes on to remind itself that this search for rational authority itself
already constitutes (together with what it dissolves) something positive –
namely, the reality that is called true infinity – and that the way in which
this reality is constituted seems to imply that it must have knowledge of
itself. In this way, Hegelian philosophy transcends skepticism. By mak-
ing skepticism internal to reality as such, it deprives it of its power as an
independent point of view.
Hegel develops the connection between knowledge and skepticism
that is implicit in true infinity, in his account of “Cognition” in the Idea
(see 5.16) and in his account of subjective Spirit (including Conscious-
ness and Intelligence) in the Philosophy of Spirit, in which he writes:

The action of Intelligence as theoretical Spirit has been called cognition

[Erkennen]. Yet this does not mean that Intelligence inter alia cognizes –
besides which it also intuits, represents, remembers, imagines, and so on.
Such a position is . . . connected with the great question of modern times as
to whether true cognition or the cognition of truth is possible. . . . [In fact,] the
concept of cognition has emerged as Intelligence itself, as the certainty
[Gewißheit] of Reason; the actuality of Intelligence is therefore cognition
itself. It follows from this that it is absurd to speak of Intelligence and yet
at the same time of the possibility or choice of cognizing or not.
(EG §445, 10:242, emphasis added; compare §445A)

The only way for Hegel’s analysis of “cognition” to have the kind of
relevance that he here suggests it has to the question of “whether true
cognition or the cognition of truth is possible” is for that analysis to
be a development of a structure within which the contrast between a
“mind” that engages in intuiting, etc., and a “reality” to which the mind
may or may not have reliable access, makes no sense. Such a structure
is presented by true infinity, in which, as I have been explaining, the
fullest reality is achieved by the inquiring mind, itself; and Hegel’s analysis
of “cognition” is indeed a development of true infinity, as I will show in
Chapters 5 and 6.
It is important, once again, to distinguish the epistemological posi-
tion that I’m attributing to Hegel from more familiar modern positions.
By saying that in knowing ourselves we know the highest reality, Hegel
is not saying, as Bishop Berkeley does, that only “minds” and the ideas in
them are real; according to Hegel, material objects are also real, to the
 reality, freedom, and god 115

extent that they go beyond themselves and engage in thought. Nor is

Hegel saying, like Kant, that thought “imposes” certain important fea-
tures on the world of appearance, and in that sense is more fundamental
than that world. In Hegel’s picture, nothing is imposed on anything by
anything else; rather, certain things are achieved by some things (namely,
by thinking things) that aren’t achieved by other things (say, by “being,”
or “matter,” as such). And finally, although the argument that I’m
attributing to Hegel certainly resembles Descartes’s argument for
knowledge, in his Meditations, in the emphasis that it puts on the
searcher’s self-knowledge – on the “cogito ergo sum” (which Hegel en-
dorses in EL §76 and Lectures on the History of Philosophy /TWA 20:131–
132) – Hegel’s argument differs from Descartes’s by giving reasons
for regarding the searcher as more “real” than merely material, non-
thinking things, so that from the point of view of Hegel’s argument,
Descartes’s categorizing of both the searcher and material objects as
equally “res,” and thus equally “real” (differing only in that one is “res
cogitans” and the other is “res extensa”), promotes an unfortunate confu-
sion. According to Hegel’s argument, by knowing ourselves – that is, by
having the experience of seeking authority for our beliefs and actions –
we know the ultimate reality, which is true infinity, the Concept, Spirit,
and so on. The “external world” is real insofar as it helps to constitute
this ultimate reality, by going beyond itself as freedom and Spirit, and
to the extent that it does that (in the way that Hegel studies especially
in his Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit, which I’ll discuss in
Chapter 6), we know the external world, as well. Descartes’s concep-
tion of knowledge is vulnerable to skepticism, and Kant’s conception
of knowledge generates skepticism (about our knowledge of things in
themselves), precisely because they view important parts of reality as
in polar opposition to thought, whereas Hegel has demonstrated, in
“Quality,” that reality as such is created by something like thought (when
the finite goes beyond itself), so that rather than spinning its wheels
in futility, skepticism’s unlimited inquiry creates and therefore has access to
reality.56

56 Defending his argument that Hegel is a “realist” about the natural world – in the sense
that Hegel believes that the truth about nature does not depend upon our mental states –
Kenneth R. Westphal contrasts Hegel’s thesis that nothing finite is ontologically inde-
pendent, which Hegel calls “idealism” and which does not conflict with what Westphal
calls “realism” about nature (because finite things don’t depend on anyone’s mental
states), with the “epistemologically based subjective idealism” (Hegel’s Epistemological Re-
alism [Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989], p. 143) of someone like Berkeley, which would conflict
116 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

As I’ve indicated, the “idealism” that most resembles Hegel’s is not

a modern idealism, but Plato’s. I’ll discuss Hegel’s idealism, and its
relation to Plato’s, further in Chapter 5 (especially 5.10).
To prevent possible misunderstanding, I should emphasize that the
“self” that I say Hegel says we know is not something that is immedi-
ately “given,” such as (for example) sensations as they are described
by empiricism; and neither is it the “starting point” of Hegel’s philo-
sophical investigation. Hegel makes it clear that nothing, as he sees
it, is purely “immediate,” and he also makes it clear (for that reason,
in fact) that the ‘I’ is not the starting point of his investigation in the
Logic (see WL 5:76–79/GW 21:62–64/75–78, criticizing Fichte). This
is another way in which Hegel’s investigation differs from Descartes’s,
for which the cogito is, in effect, the starting point. Rather than being
Hegel’s starting point, the self, or “selfhood” as I’ve been calling it, is
the theme of his investigation, from the Something through to Absolute
Spirit. Philosophy’s starting point is the “immediate,” or being, and its
theme is the way in which what is true in that starting point emerges:
the way in which immediacy and mediation, the finite and the infinite,
substance and subject, mechanism and the “Idea,” Nature and Spirit
interrelate as (the emergence of) reality or selfhood or truth. This is
what Hegel means by calling true infinity the “fundamental concept of
philosophy”: not that true infinity is philosophy’s starting point or basis,
but that it is what philosophy, as a whole, exhibits. What philosophy ex-
hibits is immune to skepticism not because it is an indubitable starting
point or basis, but because, as I indicated earlier, it is exhibited just as
much by skepticism as it is by the whole of philosophy.

.. Knowledge and “Faith”

If this is the situation with respect to knowledge, what is the situation
with respect to “faith”? Hegel wrote in Faith and Knowledge (1802), his
early systematic response to the fideism of Kant, Fichte, and Jacobi, that

with “realism” about nature. What Westphal doesn’t notice is the way in which Hegel’s
account of what Hegel calls “Realität” gives us a cognitive access to that Realität that is more
direct than our access to facts about the natural world, as such. (Accordingly, Westphal
doesn’t discuss the significance that Hegel attaches to Descartes’s cogito argument.) If
knowledge of God and of human beings as “Spirit” takes us beyond ourselves, as it does
in both the Logic and the Encyclopedia, then the precise character of our knowledge
of nature, as such, becomes a less central issue than it is for someone whose ontology
makes nature the paradigm of “reality.”
 reality, freedom, and god 117

“in true faith the whole sphere of finitude, of being-something-oneself,

of sensibility goes down [versinkt] before the thinking and intuiting of the
eternal, which here becomes one” (TWA 2:382/141; emphasis added).
Basing his own approach to the eternal on his conception of true
infinity, Hegel saw no need to contrast a sphere of faith to a sphere
of knowledge, and instead he identified true faith with “thinking and
intuiting,” which were equivalent, for him, to reason. He takes the same
position in EL (1830):

“Intuiting” and “believing” [Glauben] express initially the determinate

representations that we associate with these words in our ordinary
consciousness; it is true that in this usage, they are diverse from think-
ing, and everyone is more or less able to understand this distinction. But
now believing and intuiting ought to be taken in a higher sense, as faith
[Glauben] in God, as intellectual intuition of God; and this means that we
are to abstract, precisely, from what constitutes the distinction between
intuiting, or believing, and thinking. When they are promoted to this
higher region, we cannot say how believing and intuiting are still diverse
from thinking.
(EL §63R, TWA 8:151/111)

The distinction between intuiting or believing, on the one hand, and

thinking, on the other, applies only in the sphere of the finite, as such. In
connection with the infinite, they cease to be distinguishable, because
there the external determination that goes with intuition or with belief as
opposed to thought has been superseded (see EG §§446–449, and 6.6).
External determination is superseded in thought because in the way
that the discussion of knowledge in the previous section (3.19) suggests,
thought is ultimately internal to selfhood (or “reality” or “God”), rather
than dealing with the relation between them and something that is
external to them.
Hegel goes on to point out that sheer “faith,” when separated from all
thought, can just as well believe that “the Dalai-Lama, the bull, the ape,
etc., is God” (EL §63R, TWA 8:152/112). True faith, then, is thought
and is reason. To make this statement comprehensible, it is vital, of
course, to be clear about what Hegel means by “thought” and by “rea-
son.” They cannot be mere “cost-benefit calculation” – what Hegel often
refers to as “the understanding” (Verstand). Rather, they are the ques-
tioning of everything – of what counts as a “benefit” or a “cost,” and
why – which I first described in 2.2, which Hegel describes as “infinite,”
and to which he gives the title of “reason” (Vernunft), in contrast to
118 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“the understanding.” I hope that the defenders of “faith” will see, as

they become better acquainted with it, that Hegel’s “reason” leads to
precisely the “higher reality” that our hearts desire, so that there is no
need for them to object to calling that reality “rational.” The point in
calling it “rational” is that the process of seeking higher, more com-
prehensive reasons constitutes (in the way that I’ve been explaining) a
higher reality. This higher reality is what our hearts desire because, as
I will explain in Chapters 5 and 6, it has the character of love, as well
as – and inseparably from – what Hegel calls “reason.” (The same can
of course also be said for Plato’s higher reality, in “Diotima’s Speech”
in the Symposium.)
I should also add – and this is probably the ultimate reason for
Hegel’s refusal to contrast “faith” with “knowledge” – that people who
define their preferred relation to God in an “exclusive” way, as the
“opposite” of, or essentially not another way (not, for example, the
“rational” way or the “philosopher’s” way), invite the objection that
what they are doing seems paradigmatically unfree: that, as Hegel says,
“flight is not a liberation from what is . . . fled from; the one that ex-
cludes still remains connected to [in Verbindung mit] what it excludes”
(WL 5:196/GW 21:163,10–13/175; emphasis added), as the spuri-
ous infinity remains connected to the finite. The failure of flight
(or “negation”) to be liberation seems to be an endemic problem in
“Romantic,” anti-Enlightenment religious thinking as represented by
Pascal and Kierkegaard and their intellectual descendents, as well as in
religious “fundamentalism” in general. For it is not only “philosophers”
who are concerned about being (truly) free or truly oneself, and who
suppose that part if not all of what religion is about is – true, deep,
fulfilling – freedom or being oneself (and consequently not “fleeing,”
not defining oneself through what one “opposes”). Such freedom, it
seems plausible to suggest, might also be precisely what “love” is about.

.. Earlier Versions of These Ideas, in Hegel’s Development

Hegel made the basic outline of true infinity clear in Faith and Knowledge
(1802). There he wrote that “It is precisely through its flight from the finite
and through its rigidity that subjectivity turns the beautiful into [mere]
things – the [sacred] grove into timber” (TWA 2:290/58; emphasis
added). As opposed to such a “flight,” he wrote, “the true infinite is the
absolute Idea, identity of the universal and the particular, or identity of
 reality, freedom, and god 119

the infinite and the finite themselves (i.e., of the infinite as opposed to a fi-
nite)” (2: 352/113; emphasis added). What he didn’t make clear prior
to the Science of Logic (1812–1816), however, is why the finite and the infi-
nite are “identical” – why (as he puts it more precisely, there) “finitude
is only as a transcending of itself” and “infinity is only as a transcend-
ing of the finite” (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,34–37/145–146). Indeed,
Hegel probably hadn’t worked these arguments out, at the time that he
wrote Faith and Knowledge, but was still relying on the rather dogmatic
assertions of some such “identity” that were characteristic of his influen-
tial collaborator at the time, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.
Since the arguments in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, in which he first
makes clear his independence from Schelling, are phrased in terms
of consciousness or knowledge, rather than being, as such, they don’t
directly address this issue. Likewise, in Hegel’s important Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion from the 1820s (which have recently been newly
edited and translated into English [LPR]), these arguments are pre-
supposed, rather than laid out. So it is vital that readers who are inter-
ested in these issues and these texts should study the Science of Logic,
as well.
Another feature of Hegel’s earlier treatment of these issues that read-
ers should be aware of is his doctrine of “intellectual intuition,” or in-
tuitive intellect. It plays a central organizing role in his Differenzschrift
(The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy [1801])
and in Faith and Knowledge, and since these essays contain some of the
most extensive explicit discussions of Kant and Fichte that Hegel ever
published, they are often relied on as laying down principles, regarding
Kant’s and Fichte’s mistakes and how to overcome them, that Hegel is
assumed to hold to in his later System, as well. Intellectual intuition,
an idea from Spinoza that Kant entertained (in the Critique of Judgment,
§77) as possible for God, but not for man, and that Fichte applied to the
ego’s self-knowledge, is given the job, in these early essays of Hegel’s, of
uniting the finite and the infinite. An intellectual intuition would be a
mode of knowing the world that does not depend upon input provided
by sense organs, and thus does not divide knowledge into conceptual
ingredients, on the one hand, and sensation, on the other. Hegel is
delighted that Kant came as close as he did, by discussing this idea in
the Critique of Judgment, to overcoming the dualism of concept versus
intuition of his earlier Critiques (and also, by implication, the dualism
of the infinite versus the finite), and he is correspondingly dismayed by
120 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Kant’s conclusion that humans have no access to the faculty that could
do this (FK 2:324–326/88–90).57
At some point after he published these essays, however, Hegel be-
came aware that it wasn’t enough to assert the existence of this mirac-
ulous faculty or of the unity that it gives one access to – that a rigorous
philosophy would argue for that unity, from premises that other people
could be expected to accept. So in the Preface to the Phenomenology of
Spirit, he objects to “the rapturous enthusiasm that, like a shot from a
pistol, begins straight away with absolute knowledge, and makes short
work of other standpoints by declaring that it takes no notice of them”
(3:31/16, §27), and in the introduction to Book One of the Science
of Logic, he contrasts his approach to that of “those who begin, like a
shot from a pistol, from their inner revelation, from faith, intellectual
intuition, etc., and who would be exempt from method and logic” (WL
5:65–66/GW 21:53,34–1/67; emphasis added). What remains of his
earlier position, here, is the idea of the unity of finite and infinite in
true infinity; but this unity now must be demonstrated, by the argument
that we have been studying here, rather than taken for granted as a
starting point. It is true that in the Encyclopedia Logic (§55R), Hegel still
mentions “intuitive intellect” as a positive feature of Kantian philoso-
phy, but his thought here, no doubt – as also in EL §63R, quoted in 3.20,
and in WL 6:266/GW 12:26,28–32/593 – is that (as in Spinoza, Fichte,
and Schelling, as well) the idea of the intuitive intellect is preferable
to empiricist or dualistic views, even if, taken by itself, it is still inad-
equate. Hegel’s mature view, in the Encyclopedia, is that Intelligence’s
“faculties” all interlock, as developments of Spirit (and thus ultimately
of true infinity), so that no single faculty, such as the supposed faculty
of intellectual intuition, could solve a fundamental problem by itself.
In addition to its dogmatism, another disadvantage of Hegel’s early
Schellingian advocacy of intellectual intuition was that it did not bring
out clearly the intimate way in which true infinity, and knowledge of
it, depends upon the finite, and knowledge of it. Hegel and Schelling
intended to make a point of this sort by emphasizing (contrary to Kant
and Fichte) the way in which, as Hegel and Schelling claim, nature is
itself rational, and thus has a quality that links it to the infinite. This
left it unclear how (if at all) freedom and infinity were distinct from
nature. Hegel’s argument in the Logic for the failure of the finite to

57 I will say more about Kant’s dualism of concept versus intuition in Chapter 4, in con-
nection with Essence.
 reality, freedom, and god 121

achieve “reality,” and its consequent need for the infinite as the only
way by which it can be real – his argument that “finitude is only as a
transcending of itself” – makes it clear how and why nature and freedom,
the finite and the infinite, are distinct and at the same time interlocked,
and thus why the notion of the infinite, when it is properly understood,
need not be seen as a “flight from the finite” (FK 2:290/58) (that is, as
a sheer supernaturalism).58
The “intuitive intellect” was important, in the Differenzschrift and es-
pecially in Faith and Knowledge, as an alternative to Kant’s notion that
knowledge had two ingredients that are in principle separate: “con-
cepts” and “intuitions.” From this doctrine, Kant inferred that we can-
not have knowledge of objects of which (as he thought) we cannot have
intuitions, such as freedom and God. Since Hegel’s argument for true
infinity implies both that the finite things that ordinary sciences claim
to know are less real than infinite things such as freedom and God,
and that we can have knowledge of the latter through arguments such as
the one that Hegel is presenting, it clearly raises questions about Kant’s

58 Commenting on Hegel’s argument in EL §60R that to relate to something as a “lim-

itation” is already, in a sense, to have gone beyond it, Paul Guyer interprets Hegel as
trying “to suggest that Kant cannot merely appeal to the idea of an intuitive intellect
to bring out the limits of our own discursive intellect, but must concede its reality in
the very attempt to place any limits upon our own intellect.” To which Guyer objects
that “it simply is not true that one must recognize the existence of something that does
not have a certain property in order to conceive of that property as a defect or limit”
(“Thought and Being: Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy,” in F. Beiser,
ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993],
p. 204). So one cannot argue from the acknowledged limitedness of one faculty to the
existence of a faculty that lacks that limit. Besides overlooking Hegel’s changed attitude
toward intellectual intuition, in his mature system, however, Guyer here is also overlook-
ing the way in which Hegel’s overall argument (to part of which [see 3.6] this treatment
of “limitation,” in EL §60R, alludes) does not proceed from the existence of something
that is limited, to the existence of something else that is unlimited, but rather from the
untenability of the concept of a limited being to the need for such beings to go beyond
themselves. The argument that Guyer imputes to Hegel involves a dualism and a super-
naturalism that Hegel’s actual argument avoids, and by avoiding them, Hegel’s actual
argument makes itself considerably more plausible than absolute idealism sounds in
the depiction of it that Guyer draws from Hegel’s early essays. (The other feature of
Hegel’s argument that Guyer misses is how Hegel draws on the conceptions of obliga-
tion and autonomy – the “ought” and the perception of one’s finite “limitation” – in
Kant’s ethical theory to make plausible his notion of the finite thing’s “going beyond
itself.”) Guyer’s limitation of his discussion, in this important and challenging paper, to
what Hegel articulates “within the confines of his explicit discussions of Kant” (p. 172),
prevents him from identifying important features of Hegel’s actual argument in the EL
(and the WL). I discuss the issue of the concept/intuition relationship, on which Guyer
properly focusses most of his attention, in 4.7.
122 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

conclusion regarding what we can know. By doing so, it suggests (as

Hegel’s earlier advocacy of “intellectual intuition” had also suggested)
that Kant’s dualism of intuition and concept is open to question. Hegel
explores this particular issue later on, in the Doctrine of Essence and
the Philosophy of Spirit, and I will discuss it in Chapters 4 and 6.

.. Charles Taylor’s Interpretation of True Infinity

In his admirably energetic and provocative Hegel, which for a quarter
of a century has been the most accessible and influential interpretation
in English of Hegel’s system as a whole, Charles Taylor interprets true
infinity in a way that contrasts with the interpretation that I have been
advocating. According to one of the central theses of Taylor’s inter-
pretation of Hegel, Hegel sees individual humans as “vehicles” for the
embodiment of “cosmic spirit” (Hegel, p. 89), or of a “cosmic reason”
(p. 562). True infinity, Taylor also writes, is “an infinite life embodied
in a circle of finite beings, each of which is inadequate to it and there-
fore goes under, but is replaced in necessary order by another” (p. 240;
emphasis added). Thus, cosmic spirit, cosmic reason, or true infinity –
Taylor treats them as largely interchangeable – evidently stands by itself,
as the standard that finite things try and fail to live up to, or as the agent
that uses finite things as its vehicle. The result of these metaphors of the
“vehicle” or the external standard is that Taylor’s account fails to articu-
late the unity or identity of the finite with the infinite. Of course, Taylor is
well aware that Hegel intends such a unity, but because Taylor doesn’t get
the arguments by which Hegel actually accomplishes it into focus, Taylor’s
own metaphors – the “vehicle” and the unreachable standard – end up
taking over his presentation.59 The arguments that Taylor doesn’t get
into focus are Hegel’s arguments for the failures of the “something,”
the finite, and spurious infinity to achieve reality – the arguments that I
analyzed in 3.4 and 3.6–3.9, and that Taylor discusses in his Chapter X,
Part I. Hegel himself condenses these three arguments together in a
passage in the EL that seems to be one of Taylor’s central pieces of

59 Taylor says that, for Hegel, Spirit needs the finite in order to be embodied and aware of
itself (Hegel, p. 89). But this is still an external, means/end relationship, in which Spirit
is (as Hegel would say) a “power existing outside” the finite (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,40–
1/146), which uses the finite as a means by which to become embodied and aware of
itself. Whereas true infinity, as Hegel actually describes it, “is only as a transcending
of the finite” (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,36–37/145–146): not only its embodiment and
self-awareness, but its sheer existence depends upon the finite.
 reality, freedom, and god 123

evidence for his interpretation of true infinity (he cites part of it on

p. 241):

What is indeed given is that something becomes an other. . . . In its re-

lationship to an other, something is already an other itself vis-à-vis the
latter; and therefore, since what it passes into (übergeht in) is entirely the
same as what passes into it – neither having any further determination
than this identical one of being an other – in its passing into an other,
something only goes together with itself; and this relation to itself in the
passing and the other is true infinity.
(EL §95)

Taylor interprets this passage as suggesting that

if we contemplate the succession of finite things where each passes and

is succeeded by another, we are eventually forced to shift our point of
reference from the particular ephemeral finite things to the continuing
process which goes on through their coming to be and passing away
(Hegel, p. 241)

which is true infinity. The interpretation of Hegel’s account of qual-

ity and finitude that I have been laying out suggests, on the contrary,
that the “becoming” or “passing into” that Hegel is discussing here is
not the physical process of the something’s ceasing to exist and the
other’s coming into existence. Rather, it is the logical dependence of
the something on others for its determinate quality, which I described
in 3.4. Something “becomes” or “passes into” an other in the sense that
something’s quality is not just a fact about it, but depends upon other
somethings, so that its nature, as a finite thing, does not depend on
it, alone, but depends instead upon the conceptual space that is com-
posed of all the others that there are. In EL §94, Hegel describes the
futile process of seeking to determine the something’s quality defini-
tively by listing and encompassing all the “others” upon which its quality
logically depends, and upon which the others in turn depend, and so
on ad infinitum. This, of course, is an instance of “spurious infinity,”
because it yields only an endless progress, and does not transcend or
resolve the problem. Whereas in EL §95, which we’re looking at now,
Hegel is saying that since the other depends, for its quality, upon the
something in the same way that the something depends upon the other,
therefore in thinking about this complex of something and other, both
of them facing exactly the same problem, one’s attention can be drawn
to the potential selfhood of each of them – in which case one could say,
124 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

as Hegel does, that each of them “goes together with itself.” But what
this means is that the transcendence of the self/other dependency, if it
occurs, will occur right in the finite something, by its successfully being
itself, rather than through its somehow encompassing all of its (in-
finitely ramifying) relationships – and still less through our shifting our
point of reference away from the particular ephemeral finite something
to a continuing process of which it is merely a vehicle. So where Taylor
suggests that “we are eventually forced to shift our central point of ref-
erence from the particular ephemeral finite things to the continuing
process which goes on through their coming to be and passing away”
(Hegel, p. 241), I suggest that rather than shifting our central point of
reference away from the ephemeral finite thing, we shift it, precisely, to
the potential selfhood of that thing – to its having its quality by virtue of
itself – which Hegel has been in pursuit of ever since he introduced the
idea of “quality.” Besides being a more literal interpretation of Hegel’s
statement that the something “goes together with itself,” in true infinity,
my interpretation gives a simple and unambiguous meaning to Hegel’s
previous and closely connected account of the role of “negation” in
quality (see note 9).
Though Taylor’s description of individual humans as “vehicles” for
the embodiment of cosmic “spirit” doesn’t completely misrepresent
Hegel, because “spirit” does transcend individual humans, it does sys-
tematically overlook the fact that spirit does this only through the in-
dividual’s own transcendence of her finite condition in pursuit of her
own selfhood and reality – that is, it overlooks the side of Hegel’s true
infinity that is critical of “transcendence” as the “power outside” the
finite, or as the “beyond.” It is vital to see that at the beginning of
his systematic account of freedom, and in the true infinity, in particu-
lar, Hegel’s focus is on the individual’s pursuit of her own reality, and
not on the other, top-down, “God’s-eye view.”60 The key to understand-
ing Hegel’s conception of true infinity in this way is seeing that his
critique of Kant and Fichte, for allowing freedom to become mired

60 Errol E. Harris argues with Taylor in some detail in his An Interpretation of the Logic of
Hegel (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), particularly pp. 106–107 on
“alteration,” but I find his account of Hegel’s argument too wrapped up in terminolog-
ical details to effectively counter Taylor’s overall interpretation. The numerous other
commentators, such as Pippin (see note 14), who are attempting to interpret the Logic
and the System very differently from the way Taylor interprets them, generally do not
address Taylor’s interpretations of specific passages in Hegel’s texts, so that their dis-
agreement with Taylor doesn’t come to grips with him in a way that would help readers
to really evaluate it.
 reality, freedom, and god 125

in “spurious infinity,” overlies a fundamental agreement with Kant and

Fichte about the importance of freedom as transcending finitude. If
we keep this agreement in view, it will be difficult for us to suppose
that Hegel locates freedom fundamentally in something other than
the individual finite being that is seeking to be what it is by virtue of
itself.61 What is true in Taylor’s interpretation is that for Hegel, finite
beings fail to be real, and must go beyond themselves to be real – and
that Hegel’s category of “Spirit” (Geist) embodies that going-beyond.
What is mistaken in Taylor’s reading and in many others like it (an
early and even more influential instance being Ludwig Feuerbach’s
reading) is the idea that Hegel sees the existence of this Geist as itself
unproblematic; whereas in fact Hegel’s account of true infinity makes it
clear that infinity (and its successors, including the Idea and Geist) de-
pends upon finite things’ going beyond themselves, just as much as the
reality of finite things depends upon infinity.
It is easy to suppose that the only way to take Hegel’s theological
language and interests seriously is to assume, as Taylor and Feuerbach
do, that God (or Geist) for Hegel is the primary reality, whose existence is
not an issue in the way that the existence of finite things like ourselves is
an issue. To suppose this, however, is to overlook the lesson of Hegel’s
critique of spurious infinity, that if two things are simply opposed to
each other (as “God” and “finite things” are opposed to each other in
this Taylor/Feuerbach way of reading Hegel), they are both rendered
finite by that opposition. Geist cannot be simply other than us, opposed
to us (as it would have to be if it “used” us as its “vehicles”), on pain of
being finite, itself. It is also true that we cannot be simply other than it –
we cannot be simply finite – on pain of being unreal. And it is also true
that despite this absence of simple otherness between the finite and the
infinite – an absence that Hegel tentatively describes as their “unity,”
and eventually as their “identity” – there must be, and is, a significant
difference between finite and infinite, in order for this whole issue of their

61 The free will is the model instance, for Hegel as for Kant, in which a being goes together
with itself, rather than being determined by its relation to others. But in this chapter of
his book, Taylor refers to the “ought” only as something that Hegel introduces “in order
to allow a reference to the errors of Kant and Fichte” (Hegel, p. 239; emphasis added).
Guyer, too, in “Hegel, Leibniz and the Contradiction in the Finite” (cited in note 2),
seems to neglect Hegel’s principle that “infinity is only as a transcending of the finite”
when he interprets Hegel as simply denying the multiplicity of independent substances
that is assumed by Leibniz and by common sense (“from this viewpoint, there is no such
thing as the posited independence of individual substances” [p. 96; emphasis added]),
rather than as superseding it.
126 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

relationship of “unity” or identity to arise. This mutual dependence or

identity-in-difference of finite and infinite, which is required for their
(“truly infinite”) reality, is what we must understand in order to see
how Hegel supersedes both traditional theism and traditional atheism,
finding some real truth in each of them but also definitively going
beyond each of them, and (thus) beyond the opposition between them
(in the way that I outlined in 3.17).
As a result of the effective non-identity of the finite with the infi-
nite, as Taylor understands them using his metaphors of the “vehicle”
and the unreachable standard, he is able to conclude, in the manner of
Enlightenment critics of transcendence, that modern science and tech-
nology have “dispelled [the] vision of the world as the manifestation
of spiritual powers or a divine principle” (Hegel, p. 545) – the vision of
which Hegel’s theory of true infinity and Spirit, as Taylor understands
it, was a representative – and consequently that “Hegel’s central thesis is
dead” (p. 546). If, however, Taylor had gotten into focus the “unity” or
identity of the finite and the infinite, as Hegel understands them, and
the arguments that support that unity or identity, he would not have
been able to understand the “manifestation” relationship as a relation-
ship between one thing and another, independent thing, and it would
have become evident to him that further argument would be needed in
order to show that the first thing (the “spiritual powers or divine prin-
ciple”) could be “dispelled” by the progress of science and technology,
without depriving the second thing (nature) of its full reality.62

.. Hegel Not an Atomist

It might be mistakenly inferred from my critique of Taylor’s interpreta-
tion of true infinity that I think that Hegel does not regard free agents
as logically involved with one another – that Hegel’s position is “atom-
istic.” Such a view of Hegel could hardly be reconciled with the Logic’s

62 Besides the progress of science and technology, the other experience that Taylor thinks
has made Hegel’s central thesis “dead” is the horrors of the twentieth century’s totalitar-
ianisms, world wars, and so on. He thinks that Hegel’s philosophy of history expressed
a “sense that the horrors and nightmares of history . . . were behind us” (p. 545), which
subsequent experience has clearly shown not to be the case. But Hegel nowhere im-
plies that history will contain no further horrors – only that it will contain no lasting
social and conceptual transformation comparable to the one that he saw accomplished
through the French Revolution. And the latter claim, as far as I can see, has not been
in any way refuted by the experience of the twentieth century.
 reality, freedom, and god 127

Doctrine of the Concept, with the Philosophy of Spirit, or with the Philos-
ophy of Right, but in any case it does not follow from my interpretation
of true infinity. The point is that the logical relationship between free
agents is established, not in the Doctrine of Being, but in the Doctrine
of Essence and the Doctrine of the Concept. Hegel proceeds, after the
part of “Quality” that we have been studying, to introduce the category
of “being-for-self,” which is the embodiment of true infinity, and then to
describe how being-for-self “collapses” (WL 5: 182/GW 21:151,27/163)
into simple immediacy, which is embodied in the world-view that Hegel
calls “atomism.” Hegel takes this “atomism” very seriously, and I think
it might be correct to say that his ultimate answer to it takes up much of
the remainder of the Logic and of the Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy
of Spirit. He clearly does not regard his discussion (in “Quality”) of the
mutual involvement of determinate beings, through “negation,” as an
adequate answer to atomism, or he could have saved himself a great
deal of work. A crucial fact about his final overcoming of atomism, in
the Concept and in the Philosophy of Spirit, is that the Concept and Spirit
embody the same sort of freedom that Hegel has begun to analyze in
true infinity. They embody, in other words, Hegel’s version of Kantian
“self-transcending” being. (But they embody it on a stronger basis than it
had in “Quality”: one that isn’t prone to “collapse.”) That is why, despite
all of his criticism of Kant, Hegel is best understood as attempting to res-
cue Kant’s basic conception of freedom – by reconceiving its relation to
being and (thus) to nature – rather than to put something completely
different in its place. Indeed, Hegel also rescues Kant’s theism – again, by
reconceiving God’s relation to being and nature. And finally, through
his refutation of “atomism” and his arguments for the Absolute Idea and
for mutual “recognition,” Hegel also rescues Kant’s great argument for
the thesis that autonomy requires ethics (see 2.7–2.8, 5.14–5.17, and
6.5.1). Whether Kant would want his arguments for freedom, God, and
ethics to be rescued in this way is less important than whether there is
any other convincing way of rescuing them, which is a question that I
leave to the reader to consider.

.. Being-for-Self and the “Collapse” of True Infinity

A natural question to ask, after one has assimilated the transition from
determinate being to true infinity and ideality, would be, “What form
will numerical multiplicity, and the relations between multiple things,
take in this new world?” If things no longer get their identity purely
128 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

through the negation that distinguishes them from other occupants

of the same conceptual space, insofar as they now transcend the qual-
ities that tie them to that conceptual space, how will they be distin-
guished from and related to one another? Another natural and even
more pressing question to ask is, “How can we identify the workings
of true infinity in the world?” How does the process of transcendence
relate to the world of particular determinate beings and qualities that is
studied (presumably) by the physical sciences? Is it “in” the world in the
way that they are? What is a “world,” anyway? These are, in fact, among
the next questions that Hegel takes up, and they lead him initially –
via the “collapse” that I mentioned in the previous section (3.23) – to
a model of individuality, multiplicity, and freedom that has been and
continues to be very influential in philosophy and the social sciences:
to (material or social) atomism.
We begin with the notion of truly infinite being. The term that Hegel
introduces to describe it is “being-for-self” (Fürsichsein). This term is
meant to sum up the way in which the transcendence of finite being
was motivated by the something’s need to be in charge of its own qual-
ity – to “be itself,” as opposed to being only a “member” of a concep-
tually structured universe. “We say that something is for itself,” Hegel
says, “insofar as it transcends otherness, its connection and commu-
nity with other, has repelled them and made abstraction from them”
(WL 5:175/GW 21:145,34–36/158). This involves transcending all fi-
nite qualities, since as limitations they involve it with other. In order
to be infinite being, however, being-for-self must still involve being, in
some fashion (“determinate being is at the same time also a moment
of being-for-self” [WL 5:176/GW 21:146,6–7/159]). How can being-
for-self involve determinate being without becoming involved with a
finite other, and thus again becoming finite, itself? It can do so by hav-
ing a moment, an ingredient, of determinate being within itself. Such
a moment or ingredient Hegel calls “being-for-one” (WL 5:176/GW
21:146,12/159), since it constitutes the unity, the oneness of finite and
infinite (or, equivalently, of something and its other [EL §97A]), in
the being-for-self. Insofar as the one “for” which being-for-self is, is
only being-for-self itself, there is no “other” involved, so that determi-
nate being has been superseded, and does not constitute a limitation for
being-for-self, or render it finite. But the oneness nevertheless gives
determinate being a role as a moment within being-for-self.
This approach may sound as though it might have potential, but
Hegel immediately raises a problem for it, which I will quote and
 reality, freedom, and god 129

explain in some detail because it motivates the crucial transition to

atomism.63

Now though this moment has been designated as being-for-one, there is as

yet nothing present for which it would be – no one, of which it would be the
moment (1). There is, in fact, nothing of the kind as yet fixed in being-
for-self; that for which something (and here there is no something) would
be, whatever the other side as such might be, is likewise [so far, only] a mo-
ment, is itself only a being-for-one, not yet a one. Consequently, . . . there
is only one being-for-other, and because there is only one, this too is only a
being-for-one; there is only the one ideality of that, for which or in which
a moment is supposed to be determined, and of that which is supposed
to be a moment in it (2).
(WL 5:176/GW 21:147,18–31/159; emphases altered,
reference numbers added)

From these considerations, which I will interpret in a moment, Hegel

concludes that

the moments of being-for-self have collapsed into the undifferentiatedness

which is immediacy or being . . . and since in this immediacy [being-
for-self’s] inner meaning vanishes, it is the wholly abstract limit of it-
self – the one (WL 5:182/GW 21:151,26–33/163). The ideality of being-
for-self as a totality thus reverts, initially, to reality, and that too in its
most fixed, abstract form, as the one (3) (WL 5:183/GW 21:151,27–
30/164). The one in this form of determinate being is the stage of the
category which made its appearance with the ancients as the atomistic
principle . . . (WL 5:184/GW 21:153,21–23/165–166). [And finally:] Self-
subsistence, pushed to the point of the one that is being-for-self, is ab-
stract, formal, and destroys itself (4). It is the supreme, most stubborn
error, which takes itself for the highest truth, manifesting in more con-
crete forms as abstract freedom, pure ego and, further, as evil (5).
(WL 5:192/GW 21:160,31–36/172; emphasis and numbers added)

63 Hegel anticipates the conclusion of the passage that I am about to quote – that being-for-
self in practice loses all of the internal articulation that it might have brought with it from
the true infinity, and “collapses into undifferentiatedness” (WL 5:182/GW 21:151,26–
27163) – in his initial descriptions of being-for-self as “simple self-relation” (WL
5:174/GW 21:144,16–17/157) and as “collapsed into simple being” (WL 5:176/GW
21:146,33/158). But it seems clear that the detailed argument that I am about to quote
is his explanation of why this collapse and simplicity come about, which is something
that commentators who overlook this argument have difficulty explaining. See, for ex-
ample, Giacomo Rinaldi, A History and Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen, 1992), pp. 157–158 and 309–310, and Clark Butler, Hegel’s Logic, p. 77.
130 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

I will return to these very interesting consequences after I have inter-

preted Hegel’s initial argument [(1)–(2)] for being-for-self’s “collapse”
into undifferentiatedness. He says that in order for “being-for-one” to
be a moment, an ingredient, in being-for-self (so that determinate be-
ing can be within being-for-self, and thus not limit it from outside and
reduce it to finitude), a “one” or a unity must be present, for the mo-
ment or ingredient to relate to – for it to be a moment of (1). But
there is no such one or unity present until the two distinct moments
are present: both the infinite, and the finite determinate being – the
being-for-one – that is supposed to be united with it. And these two mo-
ments are not present as distinct moments, Hegel points out, until the
finite determinate being has in fact gone beyond itself into the “one,”
or until the infinite has in fact been produced (as “one” with the finite)
by the finite’s going beyond itself. Having given up the model of the
spurious infinite, for which finite and infinite are inherently and per-
manently distinct, we can only understand finite and infinite as distinct
moments from the point of view of the accomplished being-for-self or in-
finite being. But that means that we must presuppose the accomplished
being-for-self or infinite being, in order merely to understand or con-
ceive of its moments or ingredients. And that means that being-for-one,
the moment that was supposed to help us to understand how being-for-
self is possible (how we can have an infinite being, which doesn’t forfeit
its infinitude as a result of the being with which it’s involved), cannot
perform that function for us, because its own intelligibility depends on
that of being-for-self itself (2).
The way I read this passage, then, Hegel is saying that we can’t simply
assume the internal intelligibility of being-for-self, as a combination of
determinate being and transcendence. We have to find a starting point
from which thought can, as it were, work its way into an understanding of
the combination. But neither of the available starting points, which are
the true infinity, on the one hand, and the finite being-for-one, on the
other, can do the job, because it’s only within the already accomplished
infinite being that they have the proper significance. Since they aren’t
separately identifiable, the moments of being-for-self “collapse” and its
ideality “reverts . . . to reality . . . in its most fixed, abstract form, as the
one”: All that is left of the embodied true infinity, being-for-self, is the
idea of the one (3). (How this idea “destroys itself” (4), at least initially,
I will explain in 3.26 and further in Chapter 5.)
If this is what Hegel is saying, then it seems to me that his whole sub-
sequent discussion of atomism, and, indeed, of quantity and measure
 reality, freedom, and god 131

(the second and final parts of the Doctrine of Being), into which his
discussion of atomism flows, all of which might otherwise seem like a
large uncalled-for detour motivated merely by a desire to polemicize
against certain forms of scientific and mathematical thinking, can be
seen instead as a systematically motivated exploration of a very real
phenomenon in thought and history – one with which we have already
made some acquaintance in Chapter 2, in Hobbes and Gauthier. This
phenomenon is the “rational-choice” conception of the free agent, to-
gether with the atomistic conceptions of identity and physical existence
within which that conception is at home (and of which Hegel thinks
that evil is a form that is irresistible from within such theories – though
of course not a form that is endorsed by all who endorse the theo-
ries).64 Hegel’s interest in this phenomenon is systematic in that he
grants that these conceptions of the agent and of identity and physical
existence represent, not just wrong-headedness, but something of gen-
uine philosophical importance, which is the difficulty of gaining access,
from the initial notion of freedom that is embodied in the true infinity,
to an understanding of the world as embodying that true infinity in con-
crete ways. An acceptance of social atomism, such as is very common in
present-day philosophy and social science, can therefore be a symptom
of a perfectly genuine intellectual (as well as, quite possibly, spiritual)
problem.65 This difficulty of gaining access to an understanding of the
world as embodying true infinity is what Hegel has identified in the pas-
sage about being-for-self that I have been interpreting, and he clearly re-
gards it as very real.66 It might not be an exaggeration to say that it is the

64 Hegel’s discussions of atomism, quantity, and measure seem to be viewed as a large,

systematically uncalled-for detour by Charles Taylor, in his Hegel, pp. 244–246. It is
particularly unfortunate that Taylor, who himself has important things to say (in this
book and elsewhere) about the modern tendency towards social atomism, does not
grasp what Hegel seems to be saying, in his Logic, about the conceptual roots of that
tendency.
65 I say that this intellectual problem may “quite possibly” also constitute a spiritual prob-
lem, rather than that it will necessarily constitute such a problem, because of the great
gap that often exists, perhaps especially in our times, between an individual’s intellectual
commitments and her ethical or spiritual commitments.
66 Clark Butler describes the genesis of the “one” as a “willful exclusion of what is clearly
present within the dialectically constructed concrete totality of being-for-self,” and thus
as “a knowing and deliberate plunge into falsehood,” comparable to the biblical “Fall”
(Hegel’s Logic, pp. 77 and 80). If this were correct, surely Hegel should give some account
of what it is that performs this willful act. But of course he doesn’t reach the “will,” as
such, until much later in his system. It’s unquestionably true that what Hegel is analyzing
here is closely connected to his project of explaining the nature of evil and its relation
132 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

central challenge that the Logic is meant to meet, and which it does not
fully meet until it reaches the Concept and the Idea. That it manifests
itself as abstract freedom and as “evil” (WL 5:192/GW 21:160,36/172,
quoted above (5)), suggests the seriousness with which Hegel takes this
challenge. In the next section, I will examine Hegel’s explicit account
of atomism, as it emerges from his discussion of being-for-self.
Before proceeding to Hegel’s account of atomism, I should add that
if you wonder whether Hegel has in fact gotten to the bottom of the
issue about the internal intelligibility of being-for-self, as a combination
of determinate being and transcendence, that I take him to be posing
in WL 5:176/GW 21:147,18–31/159 (2), I think you are not alone.
I think Hegel himself suspects that this problem reflects, in part, an
inadequate grasp of the real nature of immediacy and mediation, which
are concepts that have played a major role in the whole derivation of the
concept of true infinity (and thus of being-for-self), which was guided
by the need to find some kind of immediacy for quality, in the face of
the assault of “negation.” Hegel, in fact, plans to rethink the notions
of immediacy and mediation in a thorough-going way, in the Doctrine
of Essence, and this rethinking will be an important part of his strategy
for resolving the problem about the intelligibility of being-for-self that
he raises here. I will discuss this rethinking in the next chapter.

.. Atomism
The first thing to note is that the “collapsed” being-for-self that “is im-
mediacy or being” is not simply immediacy but is “an immediacy based
on the negating that is posited as its determination” (WL 5:182/GW
21:151,27–30/163). The negating that Hegel refers to here is, in fact,
a negating of the negation that was involved in determinate being it-
self. This negating is a transcending of the finite quality (based on
negation in the sense of membership in a conceptual space) that pre-
vented determinate being from being, as I put it, fully “itself,” and thus

to freedom and the will. But we need to understand his present analysis in the terms that
he considers appropriate to it, rather than importing “more concrete” developments
(WL 5:192/GW 21:160,34/172), or we won’t see how his present analysis is supposed to
illuminate the later developments. And in fact Hegel seems to be explaining precisely
why the genesis of the “one” is not “willful,” at this point in the dialectical development,
but rather represents a genuine, so far unsolved intellectual problem. He is expressing
genuine respect – a respect that I think (as part of being “with ourselves in the other”)
we ourselves should emulate – for theories such as those of Epicurus and Hobbes.
 reality, freedom, and god 133

this negating, and the being-for-self that is based on it, still aims at the
freedom, the opportunity for the thing to be itself, that was arrived at in
the true infinity. All that it lacks, due to the “collapse into undifferenti-
atedness” that results from the problem that I analyzed in the preceding
section (3.24), is the internal articulation, into transcendence (on the
one hand) and determinate being (on the other), that would enable
it and us to see how this freedom is combined with determinate be-
ing. But there is no question that freedom is still, somehow, what this
“collapsed” being-for-self is about. Otherwise, it wouldn’t deserve at all
the names of being-for-self or of infinite being (which is what being-for-
self is supposed to be).
At the same time, the “collapse” takes being-for-self back – “initially,”
as Hegel says, so as to leave room for the further developments in the rest
of the Logic – all the way to “reality” (WL 5:183/GW 21:151,29/164).67
That is, through the collapse, being-for-self loses its “ideality,” which is
precisely the characteristic of being itself by transcending the determi-
nation by otherness that is characteristic of determinate being. So the
freedom that (as we might say) it “intends” to have – and Hegel, as I’ve
just been explaining, gives it more than full credit for this intention – it
does not achieve. So this intermediate phenomenon, neither fish nor
fowl, is quite paradoxical. Here it is appropriate to remember Hegel’s
description of freedom as “arbitrariness,” in PR §15: “arbitrariness is
contingency in the shape of will”: it is something that isn’t really will at
all, which is presented as a candidate for the status of will. The same
thing is true of what is being presented, here, as infinite, though it lacks
the internal differentation that would qualify it as infinite. The language
that is employed implies a claim, which the phenomenon itself can’t
fulfil.
Hegel describes this collapsed being-for-self as the “one,” and argues
that since its determinate being and its vocation of infinite negation
now oppose one another (and since being-for-self currently lacks the
ability to hold these opposed moments together), the “one” “excludes”
the negative vocation, “as other, from itself,” so that what’s left in the one
is unalterable (WL 5:183/GW 21:152,8 – 12/164). Since “in this simple
immediacy the mediation of determinate being and of ideality itself, and

67 Here we can safely assume Hegel is referring to the “reality” that is a moment of Quality
(WL 5:118/GW 21:98,30/111), rather than to the “reality in a higher sense” (WL 5:164–
5/GW 21:136,7/149) that is achieved through true infinity. I explained the difference
between these in 3.16.
134 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

with it all difference and manifoldness, has vanished, [t]here is nothing

in” the one, so its quality, Hegel says, is “the void” (WL 5:184/GW
21:152,22–32/165), and thus it presents us with the dual elements of
ancient Greek atomism: the atom (the “uncuttable,” or unalterable)
and the void. Since the “one,” as collapsed being-for-self, is something
that is (ein Seiendes [WL 5:187/GW 21:155,23–29/167]), but at the same
time, as the heir to the true infinity and being-for-self, it has a negative
relation to itself, it must – since this is what negation means in the sphere
of things that are – be distinguishable into a determinate being and its
other. Since these will be side-by-side, rather than superseded in an
articulated infinity, and since each of them will generate more others,
by the same process, “the one is . . . a becoming of many ones” (ibid.):
The atoms, as it were, “multiply,” by a process that Hegel figuratively
describes as “repulsion.”
Hegel notes that the doctrines of the Greek atomists don’t corre-
spond exactly to what he is extracting from collapsed being-for-self,
in particular because of the atomists’ tendency to picture atoms and
the void as existing “alongside” one another, their talk of the “com-
position” of natural objects from atoms, and their hypotheses about
the atoms’ shape, position, and direction of movement, hypotheses
that Hegel describes as “arbitrary and external enough” (WL 5:185–
186/GW 21:154,36/166–167). All of these features would be inappro-
priate, in Hegel’s view, since they imply a relationship to space, or at
any rate to the whole/part relationship, both of which are consider-
ably more concrete than being-for-self, requiring further conceptual
development, which atomism, as such, does not provide, so that an
initial expression of being-for-self – which Hegel takes to be the un-
derlying motivation of atomism – should, in principle, be formulated
without reference to them. Presumably he would explain these distract-
ing developments in Greek atomism as resulting from the tendency of
pictorial thinking not only to ignore the necessity of systematic concep-
tual development, but also to elaborate itself in unessential ways that
distract attention from the underlying thought.
Turning, then, to what Hegel takes to be the genuine, underlying
relationship between atomism and being-for-self: Hegel doesn’t specif-
ically note that (perhaps unlike their great non-atomist forebear, Par-
menides, against whom they were probably reacting) there is no ev-
idence that the Greek atomists acknowledged any connection at all
between their elements – the atoms and the void – on the one hand,
 reality, freedom, and god 135

and thought or selfhood or the will, on the other, which are the sort of
phenomena that we are likely to associate with being-for-self. By con-
necting infinitude with the void, over against the finite and unchange-
able atoms, and omitting both the conceptual space of determinate
“quality” (with its built-in “negation”) and the negation of that nega-
tion that is transcendence, the atomists might seem to eliminate the
possibility of being-for-self altogether. This should not be surprising,
however, if Hegel is correct in thinking that what they are describing
is, in fact, a “collapsed ” version of being-for-self, one in which infinity
as transcendence, and thought and the will understood as having the
potential for transcendence, are no longer in the picture.
What is still in the picture, and what leads Hegel to connect atomism
with (collapsed) being-for-self despite the atomists’ exclusion of nega-
tion and transcendence, is: (1) the self, and (2) the void. Regarding (1):
“The one in its own self,” he says, “simply is . . . It is indeterminate but
not, however, in the way that being is indeterminate; its indeterminate-
ness is the determinateness which is a relation to its own self, an absolute
determinedness – posited being-within-self” (WL 5:183/GW 21:152,8–
16/164–165). That is, despite its qualitative indeterminacy, there is one
definite, even “absolute,” feature of this one, which is its focus on – its
“relation to” or “being-within” – itself. (Is there a stronger statement
in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, or Sartre of the principle that “existence
precedes essence”?) What Hegel is suggesting is that the permanence
of the individual atoms, their unchangeability, is something that we
take seriously, as an ultimate explanatory hypothesis, because of our
familiarity with selfhood in its more ambitious, less “collapsed,” forms,
whether as self-consciousness or simply as the goal of what I called
the thing’s “being itself,” which Hegel has suggested that we impute to
(eventually self-transcending) finite beings. Something like this goal of
being itself must be at work in order to preserve the atoms forever as
themselves. We shouldn’t simply assume – though atomism does seem
simply to assume – that what there is is self-preserving identical things.
If there is a reason to assume this, it is the compellingness, for us, of
the idea that everything seeks to “be itself.” That, of course, is the idea
that Hegel’s whole analysis of quality (including determinate being and
transcendence) has traded on. And he is proposing that it may be the
best available explanation and justification of atomism’s assumption of
self-preserving identical things. If he is right about this, there is indeed
a significant connection between atomism and the ideas that lie behind
being-for-self.
136 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

(2) The second feature of atomism that Hegel connects with being-
for-self is the “void.” He praises the atomists for recognizing the void
as the source of movement, not via the trivial thought that nothing
can move without having space to move into, but via “the profounder
thought that in the negative as such there lies the ground of becoming,
of the unrest of self-movement. . . . The void is the ground of move-
ment only as the negative relation of the one to its negative, . . . that
is to itself . . . posited as having determinate being” (WL 5:186/GW
21:154,26–33/166–167). The void in this sense obviously isn’t some-
thing that lies alongside the atoms, in space. Rather, it is – as Hegel’s
argument indicated – the “one”’s quality of lacking all difference and
manifoldness, which clearly undermines whatever determinate being
the one may (temporarily) be posited as having. Such a quality will
indeed lead to motion, in the broadest sense of change, at least by elim-
inating the basis of any qualitative fixity. But the general point here
is that atomism represents (collapsed) being-for-self in so far as it de-
scribes entities not as having determinate, ongoing qualities but rather
as acquiring whatever qualities they have in response to and as a re-
sult of the absence of such qualities, which is the void. That is, atomism
and being-for-self both undermine the notion of simply given qualities
by asking what in the fundamental entities’ self-relationship – as repre-
sented by the “void” – promotes the qualities that are thought to exist?

.. Social Atomism

What I have just spelled out is the way in which, as I said earlier,
freedom – or the thing’s capacity to be itself – is still, somehow, what
“collapsed” being-for-self is about. According to the account that I have
just given, following Hegel, freedom or the thing’s capacity to be itself
is also what atomism is about, whether or not the theorists of atomism
recognize or articulate this fact.
If we understand this claim of Hegel’s, we can also see the connec-
tion that he clearly believes exists between physical atomism and social
atomism. This connection isn’t necessarily obvious from the historical
documents, since the early Greek atomists, Leucippus and Democritus,
are not reported to have advocated a social contract theory, which is
the typical embodiment of what Hegel (and other writers) describe as
“social atomism.” Epicurus, writing considerably later, does combine
physical and social atomism, since he follows Democritus in many re-
spects while also describing justice as the result of a “pact about neither
 reality, freedom, and god 137

harming one another nor being harmed” (Principle Doctrines 33). But
he doesn’t (as far as we know) develop the latter doctrine in any detail,
but instead seems to treat it as not needing particular elaboration or
defense – perhaps because it had been for some time a common view
among the Greek Sophists (who, as it happens, had no particular com-
mitment to physical atomism). In modern times, leading social contract
theorists such as Hobbes may be materialists, but are not for that reason
necessarily physical atomists. So the two views aren’t generally perceived
as entailing each other.
Nevertheless, I think Hegel gives us good reasons to regard them
as connected, at a deeper level. These are (1) the way in which social
atomism, just like physical atomism, is founded on the idea of a self-
preserving, identical entity, together with (2) Hegel’s implied argument
that the model of such an entity – what gives it its intuitive attractiveness
for us both in the physical case and in the social case – is the notion
of an entity’s “being itself,” and the way in which its truly being itself
seems to require it to transcend the conceptual space of quality – to
have an identity that is not reducible to its relations to others – via a
“being-for-self.” If social atomism and physical atomism both ultimately
rely on this single underlying intuitive idea, then the fact that they
are often articulated separately is not enough to establish that they
are logically independent of each other. It will always be possible, of
course, to advocate one without advocating the other. But someone who
understands what makes one of them plausible, will also have to see the
plausibility of the other one, and will have to have special, independent
reasons for not pursuing it.
In any case, there are two crucial things to take away from Hegel’s
analysis of atomism for his further development of the idea of freedom.
The first is the way in which social atomism, in particular, seeks to pre-
serve this compelling idea of the entity’s being itself and preserving
itself by asserting its independence of its relations to others – but with-
out embodying transcendence, or inner freedom, in itself, because of
the difficulty of arriving at that embodiment (the difficulty that led to
the “collapse” of being-for-self). It is a striking fact that the “rational
choice” approach to human behavior is not satisfied, as much osten-
sibly scientific thinking about human beings is satisfied, to assert that
human behavior can and should be explained on the same principles on
which the behavior of other organisms, and (for that matter) inorganic
bodies, is explained. Instead, rational choice theory is determinedly
normative, in that it sets up standards of rationality (often embodied
138 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

in the theorems of microeconomics) and interprets human behav-

ior as approximating, in varying degrees, to those standards. Hobbes’s
“natural laws” of what he nevertheless calls “reason” are the prototype
of this approach to human beings. So although “rational choice” theo-
ries reject, as conflicting with scientific naturalism, the sort of reason-
ing about final ends that Plato, Kant, and Hegel take to be a defining
feature of the human capacity for rationality (that is, they reject the
transcendence that is a defining feature of “infinity,” as Hegel explains
it), they don’t for that reason simply homogenize humans with nature
in general. They see humans as suitable addressees for a normative the-
ory – just as the atomism that Hegel analyzes sees its atoms as seeking, if
not to transcend their finite condition (since that seems to be beyond
their “collapsed” reach), still at least, unlike mere determinate beings,
to avoid being solely through their relations to the conceptual space of
others. That is, atomism and rational choice theories, as normative the-
ories, preserve the germ of transcendence (they present contingency
still “in the shape of will” [PR §15]), and to that extent they testify to
hopes and dreams which their conception of “science” prevents them
from articulating fully or pursuing overtly.
The second thing to take away from Hegel’s discussion of atomism
is his demonstration, which I will now turn to, of how the “abstract,
formal” independence that it assigns to its atoms is an utter failure –
how, as he says, it “destroys itself” (WL 5:192/GW 21:160,33/172). The
problem is that the “repulsion” of the many ones from each other is, in
fact, a relationship between them. Each of them therefore becomes one
that “is not for-self but for-one, where that one is in fact an other one”
(WL 5:190/GW 21:159,9–10/170). If, then, they are to have being-for-
self through their mutual repulsion, in which they supersede each other
and each posits the other as a mere being-for-other, each of them must
at the same time repel this conception from itself and posit the ones
(itself included) as not being for an other. But this won’t work, because
(1) from an observer’s point of view, they are all doing just the same
thing, and thus what each of them regards as distinguishing it from
the others does not distinguish it at all; and (2) from the one’s own
point of view, resistance (Widerstand) by the others to being posited as
mere being-for-other – resistance that can take the form either of their
simple affirmative being, or of their own attempts to posit the first one
as itself mere being-for-other – will prevent the one’s positing of the
others as mere being-for-other from succeeding (WL 5:191–192/GW
21:159–160,19–17/171).
 reality, freedom, and god 139

Thus, in its attempt to exclude the ones from itself, the one targets
itself, as well as the others, and fails to set itself apart. As a result, repul-
sion passes over into an identity, a superseding of the ones’ difference
and externality, which Hegel entitles “attraction.” The ones are all, in
effect, “one one,” as he puts it (WL 5:193/GW 21:161,1/173).
Considering the arguments – (1) and (2) – that Hegel gives for this
claim, it is natural to wonder (regarding [1]) why the one should be
concerned about the fact that its endeavors are exactly the same as
those of all the other ones, and (regarding [2]) why it should be dis-
suaded from its endeavor by the “opposition” of the others – can’t it just
unilaterally “posit” them in whatever way suits it? Both questions have
essentially the same answer. The development of Hegel’s Logic so far
has not yielded a concept of space or time that could allow qualitatively
indistinguishable things to be, nevertheless, non-identical (by having
different locations in space or time). We are talking, so far, only about
things that differ in their specific qualities. So if something that aims to
be itself by “repelling” or “excluding” multiple others from itself does
not thereby distinguish itself qualitatively from those others, it fails to
distinguish itself from them at all. This is the point made by (1). By the
same token, the one must take into account the facts that the others
(which it is trying to posit as, unlike itself, merely being-for-other) are
affirmative beings, and that they are trying to posit it, in the same way,
as merely being-for-other. It must take these facts into account because
it has no qualitative basis for distinguishing itself from the others, for
viewing them differently from itself; and without such a basis, in the
world that Hegel has so far developed, it is impossible to view things
differently. Hence the failure that Hegel describes in (2).
This reminder of the extreme simplicity of the logical resources
that are available to the atomism that Hegel describes may cause us
to wonder how much that atomism in fact has in common with a
sophisticated social atomism such as Glaucon’s (in Plato’s Republic)
or Epicurus’s or Hobbes’s or David Gauthier’s. Would these theo-
rists’ constructions “destroy themselves” in the way that the atomism
that Hegel discusses here destroys itself? We will have to see whether
Hegel can develop resources comparable to those that Glaucon and
Epicurus and Hobbes and Gauthier believe they have at their dis-
posal – whether, that is, Hegel can give sense to the features of the
complex world that Greeks and modern people think they inhabit –
without conceding the simple independence of one agent from an-
other that all of these social atomists fundamentally presuppose.
140 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

This is what he intends to do in the remainder of the Logic and the

System.
Hegel’s basic claim however, is very clear. If “self-subsistence, pushed
to the point of the one . . . is the supreme, most stubborn error, which
takes itself for the highest truth, manifesting in more concrete forms
as abstract freedom, pure ego and, further, as evil” (WL 5:192/GW
21:160,32–36/172; emphasis added), then an alternative conception
of selfhood and freedom is clearly very much to be desired. And in view
of what he has conceded to this conception of self-subsistence – that
it reflects a very substantial difficulty in the development of concrete
freedom, namely, the difficulty that led to the collapse of being-for-self –
he appears to have his work cut out for him.
 4

IDENTITY, CONTRADICTION, ACTUALITY,

AND FREEDOM (SCIENCE OF LOGIC II)

.. Introduction to Chapters 4 and 5

I indicated in the two previous chapters that Hegel seems to have at
least two major goals in his account of freedom. The first is to show
that one cannot be fully free while regarding some free agents (as Kant
says) “merely as means” – having an attitude towards them that doesn’t
fully reflect their capacity for freedom. (How one’s attitude towards
free agents could fully reflect their capacity for freedom, remains to be
spelled out.) Hegel’s second major goal is to show that it is reasonable
to regard freedom, in the strong sense of the word that he shares with
Kant, as a full reality, and not as something that one can take seriously
only by postulating a parallel “world” or “standpoint” for it to inhabit.
Obviously, the practical relevance of the first goal is likely to depend, to
a considerable extent, on success in achieving the second goal, which is
why (if my interpretation in Chapter 3 is correct) Hegel addresses the
second goal almost from the beginning of the Science of Logic.
In the latter part of Chapter 3, I described how Hegel sees success
in regard to both of these goals as imperilled by what he calls the “col-
lapse” of being-for-self or true infinity – the “collapse” that leads to what
Hegel calls “atomism,” in which individual things (“atoms”) transcend
their finite natures by recognizing an “ought,” but immediately short-
circuit this transcendence by connecting the “ought” only to their own
desire-satisfaction and self-preservation. Hegel gave reasons for think-
ing that this atomism “destroys itself” (WL 5: 192/172; see 3.26), but
his conclusion was not to return directly to true infinity or being-for-
self and try to resuscitate them. Rather, he appeared to recognize that
atomism’s “self-destruction” was not the last word on that subject, but
that the defenders of what could more generally be called “rational

141
142 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

egoism” could reasonably seek to provide it with additional concep-

tual resources, such as concepts of diversity, subject and object, space
and time, and the “side-by-side” existence of mutually indifferent enti-
ties (resources that hadn’t yet been developed in the extremely simple
world of “Quality”), which might enable the defenders to restate their
doctrine in a more defensible way. Thus, part of what I take to be hap-
pening in the subsequent sections of the Logic and the Philosophy of
Nature and Philosophy of Spirit is that Hegel is developing some of these
resources, “on behalf of” rational egoism, so as to give it the benefit
of the doubt, but with the intention of showing that this development
will nevertheless lead back to something substantially equivalent to true
infinity (though without the latter’s proclivity to “collapse”). And thus
Hegel is showing that, given all the conceptual resources that either
side might ask for, infinite freedom nevertheless wins and egoism loses.
Can Hegel in fact develop resources comparable to those that
Epicurus and Hobbes, and their followers down to the present, take
for granted – diversity, space and time, the “side-by-side” existence of
things – without conceding the egoism and social atomism that Epicurus
and Hobbes and their followers believe follow automatically from the
systematic deployment of these resources? That is, can Hegel develop
these resources in a way that lines up with true infinity rather than with
spurious infinity? How do Hegel’s “Essence” and “Concept” solve the
problem that caused being-for-self to “collapse” into atomism? And do
they do so in a way that precludes egoism’s reemerging?
To develop these resources in a way that lines up with true infinity and
solves the problem that caused being-for-self to “collapse” into atom-
ism, and thus precludes egoism’s reemerging, Hegel needs to show, at
least, (1) that the side-by-side plurality of things that is characteristic
of a world or nature as it is initially understood by science necessarily
“inwardizes itself” (thus generating “Essence”), and (2) that this in-
wardness necessarily converts itself into beings that are mediated with
each other (“being that has been restored, but as its infinite mediation
and negativity in itself” [WL 6: 269/596]) in such a way – this result
being the “absolute Idea,” the realized Concept – that it makes no sense
for these beings to relapse into egoism by regarding each other merely
as means. Step (1) is the transition to “Essence” (and also the transition
from Nature to Spirit), and step (2) is the transition to the (eventually
“realized”) “Concept,” and more immediately, the transition from “Sub-
stance” to “Subject.”
Step (2), in particular, is often seen as a major problem for Hegel.
Charles Taylor says that here “we seem to have once more a case where
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 143

Hegel is sure of an ascending transition because he is already sure of

it; where he gives us what are hints and traces of the higher reality
which the lower is meant to be an emanation from, and takes these for
a proof” (Hegel, p. 294). Klaus Düsing says that “it is not shown why, in
fact, the separation between the substances [at the end of the Doctrine
of Essence] must be overcome by a thinking and not just an essentially ex-
isting self-relationship.”1 And Rolf-Peter Horstmann describes Hegel’s
oft-repeated claims that (as Horstmann puts it) “thinking and being are
one and the same, or that only thinking has being,” and that this unity
is “the whole of reality” – claims that correspond, in effect, to step (2),
and the transition from Substance to Subject – not as claims that Hegel
argues for, but as reflecting a “conviction” that Hegel “never felt any need
to question.”2
Step (1) is less often attacked, because it is less often explicitly dis-
cussed, but similar objections, no doubt, might be raised against it.
When Hegel writes that Essence’s “movement consists in . . . becoming
as infinite being-for-self what it is in itself,” and thus becoming
“Concept” (WL 6:16/GW 11:243/391), critics who are doubtful about
the last stage – becoming “Concept” – might well also question the ori-
gin and status of (that is, the “inwardizing” that led to) the “essence”
that supposedly has this last stage implicit “in itself.” As we examine the
way in which Hegel interprets this “essence” and its “inwardness,” it will
become clear that much of the “idealism” that becomes explicit in the
Concept is indeed already implicit in “essence,” so that this step of the
argument should certainly not be uncontroversial.
Both in relation to step (1) of the argument against egoism, then,
and as background for step (2) of the argument, it will be important for
us to get clear about what Hegel is up to at the beginning of “Essence”:
What is this new project about, and what does it presuppose? To answer
this question, I will begin by outlining the remainder of the Doctrine
of Being: the sections on Quantity and Measure.

.. Quantity and the Theme of “Unity”

Being, Hegel says, is the immediate (WL 5:82/GW 21:68,3/81;
6:13/GW 11:241,4/389). The emergence of something that is not

1 Klaus Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1976), p. 231;
emphasis added.
2 Article, “Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,” in Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
(London and New York: Routledge, 1998), vol. 4, pp. 265 and 266 (emphasis added).
144 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

oriented towards immediacy already begins – as one might expect –

at the point in the Logic where the dangerous consequences of imme-
diacy have become evident – namely, in the discussion of the “one,” in
whose “immediacy” the “inner meaning” of being-for-self “disappears”
(WL 5:182/GW 21:151,31–32/163) and is replaced by atomism and,
together with it, by the “supreme, most stubborn error, which takes it-
self for the highest truth” and one of the concrete forms of which is
“evil” (WL 5:192/GW 21:160,33–36/172). Hegel writes:

The fundamental determination of quality is being and immediacy, in

which limit and determinateness are so identical with the being of some-
thing, that with its alteration the something itself vanishes; posited in this
way, it is determined as finite. Because of the immediacy of this unity, in
which the difference has vanished but is implicitly present in the unity
of being and nothing, the difference as otherness in general falls outside
this unity. This relation to other contradicts immediacy, in which qualita-
tive determinateness is self-relation (1). This otherness supersedes itself
in the infinity of being-for-self, which realizes the difference (which in
the negation of the negation is concretely in it [an und in ihm]) as the
one and the many and their relations, and has raised quality to the true
[wahrhafte] unity, that is, a unity that is no longer immediate but is posited
as in agreement with itself (2).
(WL 5:199/GW 21:165–166,15–32/177–178; emphasis
changed and numbers added)

The theme of this paragraph is “unity,” which is a concept that Hegel

does not formally introduce or define. What he says about it is reveal-
ing, however. Because the “unity” of being and determinateness (that
is, negation) in the something is “immediate,” the something becomes
dependent on an other – and such a relationship is not “immediate.”
Because of this contradiction (1), we move to the infinity of being-
for-self, in which the “difference” (the articulatedness) that was previ-
ously between being and determinateness is now (after being-for-self’s
“collapse,” I would add) between the one and the many. But the result
of this move, Hegel says, is that quality becomes a “unity that is no longer
immediate,” but instead is “posited as in agreement with itself,” or
“true” (2).
The initial embodiment of this new “unity” is “quantity,” which is “the
determinateness that has become indifferent to being, a limit that is just
as much no limit; being-for-self that is simply identical with being-for-
other” (WL 5:209/GW 21:173,5–8/185). That is, quantity is a determi-
nateness in which there is no issue about selfhood, no conflict between
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 145

a thing’s project of being itself and its being determined by its relations
to other things. The “limit” of quantity is “no limit” – it’s a determi-
nateness that is “indifferent to being” – because changing it, bringing
in what was previously “other” or extruding and making “other” what
was previously itself, does not affect the existence of quantity, as such,
in the way that changing the relation of a quality to its other affects
the existence of that quality, as such. Such a change would affect the
existence of what Hegel calls a “quantum,” which is a specific quantity,
but it does not affect the presence of mere quantity as such. Exam-
ples of mere quantity as such are space, time, matter, light and the ‘I’
(WL 5:214/GW 21:178,8–10/189). Quantity is a continuous plenum,
uninterrupted by anything selflike, so it doesn’t have an identity that
hinges on its relation to what is other than it.
But to return to “unity,” the theme of Hegel’s description of the pro-
cess by which we arrived at quantity: Hegel appears to be telling us that
quantity is not merely a ‘degenerate’ form of being, in relation to qual-
ity (not merely a form of being that’s associated with such un-“spiritual”
modes of being as number, space, and time); rather, quantity embodies
something, which he’s calling “true unity,” or “agreement with itself,”
that might turn out to be a viable substitute for the immediacy that
turned out (in the vicissitudes of finitude and being-for-self) to be,
perhaps, a questionable goal.
This interpretive hunch is confirmed by the subsequent development
of Quantity and of the category that follows it, Measure. Correspond-
ing to the moments of “repulsion” and “attraction” by which the “one”
was converted into quantity, Hegel finds in quantity a moment of “dis-
creteness” and a moment of “continuity.” He describes this continuity
as “the one as superseded, as unity, [and] its self-continuation as such
in the discreteness of the ones. Consequently,” he says, “it is posited as
one magnitude [eine Größe]” (WL 5:230/GW 21:191,33–35/201). The
positing as “one magnitude” follows, I take it, because as soon as it’s
regarded as a special kind of being – that is, a determinate being –
contrasted to another kind of being that is continuous magnitude, dis-
crete magnitude takes on the limitedness that determinate being must
have: It becomes a specific magnitude, “one magnitude.” Notice, once
again, the role of “unity” (now identified as the “superseded ‘one,’” in
the form of continuity) as the underlying, background condition of this
development.3

3 A. V. Miller translates Einheit, in this passage, as “unit,” rather than “unity,” which totally
scrambles the passage’s meaning, as I understand it.
146 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel says that the specification of this one magnitude, or “quan-

tum” (= “how much”), as a number, involves a “contradiction,” which
has something to do with the “externality,” in relation to each other,
of the plurality of “ones” of which the number is made up (WL 5:234/
GW 21:195,21–27/204). As I understand his explanation of this con-
tradiction (an explanation that comes quite a few pages later), what it
comes down to is that in order to specify a magnitude by means of a
number, we need to employ a unit of some kind (or something that is
already specified in terms of such a unit). This unit or already specified
thing is what Hegel refers to as a “degree” or “step” (Grad). His point
about the plurality of ones of which the magnitude-specifying number
is made up is that there is nothing to distinguish any one of them as
the appropriate unit, so that “this plurality collapses of its own accord
into its continuity and becomes a simple unity . . . [and] the externality
which constituted the ones as a plurality vanishes in the one as a rela-
tion of number to itself” (WL 5:251/GW 21:210,12–20/218). That is, a
unit must come from some other source than from among the “many”
that make up the magnitude; the magnitude-specifying number must
itself be “number” (“a relation of number to itself”), it can’t be found
among the “ones.” Hegel elaborates this point as the “quantitative in-
finite progress” (WL 5:262/GW 21:220/226ff.). This infinite progress
has a parallel structure to the qualitative infinite progress by which finite
quality sought to define itself by appealing to what it is not, and then to
what what-it-is-not is not, and so on to infinity (EL §93). The specifica-
tion of what the magnitude really is depends upon the specification of a
unit or a “degree.” But in order to specify the magnitude of the unit or
degree, in its turn, we would need another unit or degree; and so on to
infinity. We can’t solve this problem by means of an “arbitrarily chosen
unit,” because the magnitude of such a unit is, precisely, not specified.
The upshot is that if there is such a thing as a fully specified magnitude,
its specification depends upon an endless sequence of considerations
that are external to it. No magnitude is fully specified in itself.4

4 In a well-known Remark, Hegel describes Kant, Fichte, and Schelling as being tempted to
imagine the relation between morality and nature, the infinite and the finite, as a quan-
titative one: “The relation to the quantitative becomes itself quantitative; . . . the power of
the ‘I’ over the ‘not-I,’ over the senses and external nature, is . . . so pictured that moral-
ity can and ought continually to increase, and the power of sense continually to diminish”
(WL 5:268/GW 21:225,22–27/231). “This standpoint which is powerless to overcome the
qualitative opposition between the finite and the infinite and to grasp the idea of the true
will which is substantial freedom, has recourse to magnitude in order to use it as a mediator,
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 147

In this way, quantum (the definite quantity) is superseded: Its def-

initeness lies outside it, and this makes it, abstractly, a “non-being”
(WL 5:276/GW 21:233,6/238). Hegel now points out, however, that
a non-being is also something with magnitude (namely, I take it, zero
magnitude), so that quantum is not broken off, by this discovery; rather,
“it continues in its non-being . . . [so that] its non-being, its infinity, is
limited – that is, this ‘beyond’ is superseded, [because] it is itself speci-
fied as a quantum” (WL 5:277/GW 21:233,7–13/238). No quantum is
fully specified in itself, but what is outside it is nevertheless still quan-
tum, so the domain of quantum is not superseded. Though it is not
superseded, quantum reveals itself, through this “negation of the nega-
tion,” as quality (WL 5:278/GW 21:235,37/239), because quantum “is
itself just by being external to itself” (WL 5:277/GW 21:233,16/238),
and being itself (as we know from Chapter 3) is what quality is about.

.. Measure
Thus we get a return to quality, within quantity. The resulting union of
quality and quantity, Hegel calls “measure” (Maß), which he describes
as “self-related externality [which] as self-related is at the same time
superseded externality and exhibits [hat an ihr selbst] the difference from
itself which, as an externality, is the quantitative moment, and as taken
back into itself is the qualitative moment” (WL 5:387/GW 21:323,11–
16/327). Hegel compares the role of this “third” moment, measure, in
integrating quality with quantity to the role of Spirit in integrating logic
(“the exposition of God” [WL 5:44/GW 21:34,39/50]) with nature:
“In the true triad [Dreiheit] there is not only unity [Einheit] but union
[Einigkeit]; the conclusion of the syllogism is a unity possessing content
and actuality, a unity which in its wholly concrete determination is Spirit”
(WL 5:389/GW 21:325,9–13/328). Hegel explicitly associates this “true
triad” with “true infinity” (ibid.), the unity-in-difference of finite and
infinite. Quality is apparently identified with logic, the infinite, and the
Creator, and quantity with nature, the finite, and the created world.

because magnitude is superseded quality, the difference which has become indifferent”
(WL 5:269/GW 21:226,27–32/232). Hegel’s objection to this line of thought is that “it
is true that the quantitative is the supersession of immediate determinateness [that is,
of the qualitative], but it is only an incomplete supersession, only the first negation, not
the infinite, not the negation of the negation” (WL 5:270/GW 21:228,2–5/233). The
negation of the negation will be found in Measure and in what emerges from it – namely,
Essence and the Concept.
148 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Following the pattern of true infinity, measure must begin to show us

how the latter three transcend themselves, to realize themselves in the
former three, and how the former three depend upon the latter three’s
self-transcendence for their reality. Thus measure will be the first major
step on the return path from the collapse of being-for-self, which led
(through atomism) to the point of view of (mere) Quantity – it will be
the first major step toward the conception of reality as “union,” “a unity
possessing content and actuality,” which is Hegel’s goal. “Unity,” as such,
is evidently not the goal, but we can see that it will be an important step
along the way.
So, let’s see what measure contributes to this project. First, Hegel es-
tablishes that measure isn’t just a matter of adopting “units of measure”
by convention (WL 5:395–396/GW 21:330–331, 36–28/334). On the
contrary, everything that exists has a scale of magnitude that it has to
be within, in order to exist at all (WL 5:396/GW 331,31–38/334). The
ancient Greek paradoxes of the bald head and the heap (WL 5:397/
GW 21:331,29–30/335) bring this out: Changes that appear to be
merely “gradual” – the removal of one hair at a time, one pebble at
a time – eventually bring about the new quality of baldness or of the
absence of a heap. Thus a non-bald head or a heap has an implicit mea-
sure. Hegel refers to this kind of implied measure as the “specified”
measure, and, insofar as it is thought of as separate from the head or
the heap, as a “specifying” measure. Such a specifying measure can, in
fact, be another concrete thing, as when the surrounding environment
(say, the air) specifies a temperature that an object must deal with, as-
similate, in its own way (WL 5:401/GW 21:335–336/338). In practice,
the air and the object each specify, for the other, something that it must
deal with. This is “real measure,” in which both sides specify each other;
each side is an independent thing, having its own measure, but each
likewise presents something that the other must deal with – a parameter
for the other – and thus determines (in part) what a viable magnitude or
measure for the other will be. Hegel’s point is not that if an object doesn’t
“deal with” its environment, it will be destroyed, by some causal process,
so that “dealing” is an imperative of causal survival; rather, his point is
that to be the kind of thing that it is is to deal with its environment in
certain ways, so that “dealing” is an imperative of logical existence, as
such. That’s what it means to say that pairs of things specify each other’s
measure. Hegel’s primary examples of this “specification” of measure
are taken from physics and chemistry: the combination of two metals
(“combination of two measures” [WL 5:415/GW 21:347/350]), the
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 149

chemical interaction of substances (“measure as a series of measure-

relations” [WL 5:416–420/GW 21:348–352/351–354]), and the “elec-
tive affinity”of acids and bases (WL 5:420–435/GW 21:352–363/354–
366). In each case, and especially in the latter ones, certain kinds of
interaction with others are essential features – “measures” – of the ob-
jects themselves.
The intimate way in which these latter substances – chemical sub-
stances, acids and bases – co-determine each other’s character, leads
Hegel to the special case of a “nodal line [Knotenlinie] of measure-
relations,” in which a substance or set of substances act or interact in a
way that is partially merely quantitative, but is also intermittently qualita-
tive. As the strings of an instrument are tuned, quantitative changes give
way, periodically, to qualitative ones, at the points where the increased
tension of a string (quantitative change) yields not just a different note,
but a note that harmonizes with another string (qualitative change). As
steam is cooled (quantitative change), it reaches a point at which it
condenses (qualitative change); as it is cooled further (another quanti-
tative change), it eventually reaches a point at which it freezes (another
qualitative change). Hegel’s observation about these phenomena:
Such a being-for-self, because it is at the same time essentially a relation of
quanta, is open to externality and to quantitative alteration; it has a range
within which it remains indifferent to this alteration and does not change
its quality (1). But there enters a point in this quantitative alteration at
which the quantity is changed and the quantum shows itself as specifying,
so that the altered quantitative relation is converted into a measure, and
thus into a new quality, a new something. . . . But because the difference
falls into this quantitative aspect, the relation between the new something
and its predecessor is one of indifference; their difference is the external
one of quantum (2). The new something has therefore not emerged
from or developed out of its predecessor but directly from itself, that is,
from the inner specifying unity which has not yet entered into determinate
being (3). The new quality or new something is subjected to the same
progressive alteration, and so on to infinity (4).
(WL 5:437/GW 21:365,38–20/367–368; emphasis and
reference numbers added)

Hegel refers to this complex as a “being-for-self” because it is a system

that has an identity or a mode of organization that goes beyond its
quantity and quality at a given time (1). It is a system of stretched strings
and harmonies, or a system of transformations of H2O. It exhibits an
order that is systematic, but parts of that order are purely quantitative
150 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

changes. So the relation between the new something (the new quality)
and its predecessor – between, for example, fluid water and ice – is
not itself a qualitative relation, but rather is one of indifference; it is
the external relation of quantum (2). Because of this indifference, the
new something or quality has not emerged from or developed out of its
predecessor (in the way that one quality emerges logically from another
in Determinate Being); rather it has emerged from “the inner specifying
unity which has not yet entered into determinate being” (3). Hegel’s
point is that what specifies the new quality, here, is not “negation” (as
it was in Quality), and is not mere quantity, either. The new quality
that the system takes on is specified neither by what it is not (as in
Quality) nor by the quantitative change in the tension of the string or
the temperature of the water. The new specific character of the system
must therefore be specified by something else entirely – which Hegel
describes here as the “inner specifying unity” (and which he will later
will baptize as “absolute indifference,” and as “essence”).
It is also important to note the final statement: “The new quality or
new something is subjected to the same progressive alteration, and so on
to infinity.” (4) In what sense does this “progressive alteration” (Fortgang
seiner Veränderung) go “on to infinity”? Certainly not in the sense that
strings can be tightened to infinitely greater tension, or that water goes
through infinitely many qualitative transformations as its temperature
is reduced, or that we have to think of either the tightening or the tem-
perature change as composed of infinitely many gradations. To see why
Hegel brings in infinity here, we need to remember what “alteration”
meant in Quantity, and in Quality. It meant the search for determinate-
ness. The initial quality “altered” because it gained determinateness
only by relating to others (“being-for-other”) (WL 5: 127/GW 21:106/
118; see 3.4). Its “alteration” was the admission that it depended on
others for its determinacy. The same was true of the “alteration” of
Quantum. To specify a quantum, we need to mobilize something other
than it: a unit of measure or a measured amount. Thus the quantum
“alters”: It is dependent on an other (WL 5:260/GW 21:218,3/226). In
the present case of Measure, Hegel has made it clear that the transfor-
mations that take place on the nodal line are not determined (specified)
in the usual qualitative way, or in the usual quantitative way. How can
they be specified? By a “progressive alteration, to infinity,” he says. I take
this to mean that they “could” be specified by in some way expanding
the system that is being studied, to take into account everything that
contributes to specifying its character. But this expansion must be in
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 151

principle unlimited – “to infinity” – or else the result risks looking just
as arbitrary and unsatisfying as the mere statement that “a string under
this tension harmonizes with a string under that tension” or “steam is
something that condenses at 100 degrees Centigrade and freezes at 0
degrees Centigrade.” What specifies these measures cannot be limited
in advance, and it may be, in principle, everything. That is, it may be in
principle unlimited.
It’s important to see that the question that Hegel is addressing here
is still not one that can be answered by the empiricist’s all-purpose re-
course to “causation.” The “determination” (Bestimmung) or “specifica-
tion” (Spezifizieren) that Hegel is focussing on is still logical in the sense
that time and space, as such, play no role in the realm that thought has
constructed, up to this point, so neither do normal causal relationships
(before and after, transformation). The issue is not what “causal laws”
govern the heating and cooling of water, but how are the qualitatively
different phases of that process related to one another as phases of one
and the same thing, system, or substance? How is it that one thing, system, or
substance takes such radically qualitatively different forms when within
each of them its alteration is merely quantitative? How does this internal
structure affect our conception – our “determination,” our “measure-
specification” – of what the thing, system, or substance is, that we’re
talking about?
And Hegel’s point about infinity, in this connection, is that if we cut
short the process of “determination” or “specification” at any particular
point, saying that the kind of thing, system, or substance that we’re
talking about is simply “water,” or simply “H2O,” or simply a particular
configuration of electrons and protons, or a particular class of “super-
string,” or whatever it might be, we will be correspondingly limiting
our understanding (our determination or specification) of what the
thing, system, or substance really is. Hegel’s examples from physics
and chemistry illustrate what he takes to be important progress in the
determination or specification of what things really are, and his point
is that the last thing that a rationally informed scientist would want to
do would be to place a limit on progress of this sort and say, “This is it.
Beyond this specification or determination, there is no point in going
any further.”
Hegel sums up the situation thus:

The quantitative reference beyond itself to an other which is itself quan-

titative perishes in the emergence of a measure relation, of a quality
152 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

(1); and the qualitative transition is superseded in the very fact that the
new quality is itself only a quantitative relation (2). This transition of the
qualitative and the quantitative into each other proceeds on the basis
of their unity, and the meaning of this process is only the determinate
being, the showing or positing that such a substrate underlies the process,
a substrate which is their unity (3).
(WL 5:444/GW 21:371,14–23/372–373; numbers and
emphasis added)

Mere quantity perishes in the emergence of a measure relation insofar

as the latter constitutes the quality of distinct self-subsistent somethings
(WL 5:412/GW 21:345,13–15/348), as in the combination of metals,
the sequence of measure-relations in chemistry, and the nodal line of
measure-relations. Quantity as such is superseded, here, into relations
between qualities (1). On the other hand, quality itself can be seen in
measure as a quantitative relation, because of the way it succumbs to
merely quantitative changes (2). This transition of the qualitative and
the quantitative into each other – most dramatically in the nodal line of
measure-relations – implies an underlying substrate that ties the process
together, that constitutes their unity (3):
Now such relations are determined only as nodal points of one and the
same substrate. . . . The measures and the self-subsistent things posited
with them are reduced to states [Zustände]. The alteration is only change
of a state, and what goes through the transition [das Übergehende] is posited
as remaining the same in the process.
(WL 5:444/GW 21:371,32–37/373)

That is, the “inner specifying unity” (as Hegel called it earlier) can
be thought of as something that underlies and persists through the
processes of transition: as a “substrate” expressed through changing
“states.” This idea leads to the final topic of the Doctrine of Being:
“absolute indifference.”

.. Absolute Indifference

How are we to name and understand this “substrate,” which underlies
quantity and quality and their interrelations? The first name for it that
Hegel considers is “absolute indifference” – “indifferent” in that it is un-
determined, unspecified; “absolutely” indifferent in that it is a process
of self-mediation resulting, through the negation of all quantity and
quality, and of their “initially immediate unity,” measure, in a “simple
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 153

unity” (WL 5:445–446/GW 21:373,34–9/375). Hegel immediately ob-

serves that if it’s interpreted as something that is external to its “states”
in a qualitative sense, this indifference won’t work (it “vanishes”): Qual-
ity is defined as determinate being, so something that is different from
determinate being cannot be qualitatively different from it. As a result,
we must say that

what was called ‘state’ is its immanent, self-related differentiation; it is

precisely externality and its vanishing which make the unity of being
into indifference and they are therefore within this indifference, which
therewith ceases to be only a substrate and in its own self [an ihr selbst] only
abstract [; instead, it is now] the concrete, which is mediated with itself, in
itself, through the negation of all the determinations of being.
(WL 5:446/GW 21:373,19–27/375; emphasis added and
sequence altered)

The vanishing externality is now immanent, within the “indifference”:

The “indifference” differentiates itself. How should we conceptualize
this internal differentiation? The first possibility that Hegel consid-
ers is “indifference as the inverse ratio of its factors” (WL 5:446/
GW 21:374/375). In this approach, one thinks of the two differenti-
ated sides as distinguished by the preponderance, in one, of one quality,
and of the opposite quality in the other. Both sides have some of each
quality, so that the differentiation itself won’t be qualitative, but the
relative amounts of the qualities in each side are inversely proportional.
As Giacomo Rinaldi explains, Hegel here is alluding to the position
taken by Schelling in his accounts of the respective roles of subject and
object, infinite and finite, or mind and nature, within the “absolute,”
which Schelling also calls the “indifference.”5 Since the distinction be-
tween the two sides can’t be qualitative, because that would make both
sides finite, Schelling concludes that it must be quantitative, and sets it
up in the way that I just described (cf. Hegel, Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, TWA 20:440; and also WL 5:270/GW 21:227,26–35/233).
Hegel finds a contradiction within Schelling’s construction, however.
The two sides of the relationship have determinate being only insofar
as they differ – only insofar as one quality is preponderant on one side
and the other quality on the other side. However, the two qualities are
not independent of each other. Rather, they constitute a unity, each

5 Giacomo Rinaldi, A History and Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (Lewiston, NY: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1992), p. 178, and compare p. 63.
154 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

of them having meaning and reality only in its qualitative relation to

the other. But “since their quantitativity is simply of this qualitative na-
ture, each reaches only as far as the other does. . . . In their qualitative
relation, each is only insofar as the other is” (WL 5:450/GW 21:376,
5–12/378–379). The presence of one is, through their qualitative (neg-
ative) relationship, the presence of the other. So neither quality can,
in fact, be preponderant, and thus, since they have determinate being
only insofar as they differ, neither of them can have determinate being.

.. Beyond Absolute Indifference: Essence

From the contradiction that Schelling’s account falls into, Hegel con-
cludes that the “substrate” must be understood not merely as “indiffer-
ent,” but as “in itself immanently negative and absolute” – that is to say,
as “essence” (WL 5:451/GW 21:377,1–4/379).

Indifference is now posited as what it is, namely as simple and infinite

negative relation-to-self, its incompatibility with itself, its repelling of it-
self from itself . . . (1). Now these repelled determinations do not possess
themselves, do not emerge as self-subsistent or external determinations,
but . . . as determinations which are immanent in the unity that is for-itself,
they are only through their repulsion from themselves (2). Instead of be-
ing things that are [Seiender], as in the whole sphere of being, they are now
merely as posited, simply with the vocation and significance of being related
to their unity, and thus each of them to its other and to negation (3).
(WL 5:456–457/GW 21:382,24–6/384; emphasis and reference
numbers added)

Indifference, understood as essence, is “relation-to-self” in that it has

an identity that is more than the sum of its parts or aspects. It is “infi-
nite” in that, in that self-relationship, it goes beyond finite qualities and
quantities. It is “negative” in the sense of the “negation of the negation”:
that it aims at selfhood, by opposing dependence on what is other than
itself. It is “incompatible with itself,” and “repels” itself in that it can’t re-
main simple, but (like the “one,” in being-for-self) differentiates itself
into determinate things, so as to be real (1). But, for the reason ex-
plained in the first paragraph of 4.4, these determinate things are not
self-subsistent or external to indifference or essence; they are immanent
in its unity, having their being only through its repulsion from itself. Its
unity is “for-itself,” rather than just “in itself,” in that it is a function-
ing goal (like selfhood in the original true infinity and being-for-self)
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 155

(2). The great divide between the sphere of being, which we have now
left behind, and the sphere of essence, is that in the latter, things are
determinate only insofar as they are “posited,” and thus only in relation
to the for-itself unity of indifference or essence, including the process
of negation by which it differentiates itself (3).
In the following sections, I will examine Hegel’s development of this
idea of “essence” (including the idea of “positing”). Before I do so, a
brief retrospect. Quality, quantity, and measure were all (to differing
degrees) under the sway of the idea that, like “being” itself, being’s de-
terminateness should be something immediate. In quality, being was
supposed to be immediately determinate. In true infinity and being-
for-self – that is, in the very search for immediacy – a “unity,” how-
ever, emerged that did not depend upon immediacy (WL 5:199–200/
GW 21:166–167,14–11/178). “Pure quantity,” as a being-for-self that
is real but has “returned into itself,” was “infinite unity” (WL 5:209/
GW 21:173,26–30/185). Analysis of measure led to an “inner specifying
unity which has not yet entered into determinate being” (WL 5:437/
GW 21:365,17–18/368). When this specifying unity was interpreted as
“indifference,” and when this indifference was shown to be “immanently
negative” (WL 5:451/GW 21:377,2/379), the resulting “unity that is
for-itself” (WL 5:457/GW 21:382,39/384) was essence. That is, essence
represents a full implementation of the overcoming – which was be-
gun by true infinity and being-for-self – of the idea of immediacy. The
idea of immediacy, itself, will, in fact, be radically reinterpreted within
Essence’s account of “Reflection.” After we have acquired a full under-
standing of “reflection,” the reinterpreted immediacy (what is true in
being’s “immediacy”) will return as “existence” and as the “real reflec-
tion,” which is actuality and substance (WL 6:201/GW 11:380,14/541),
and the Concept will embody this mediation between “being and
essence, the immediate and reflection” (WL 6:245/GW 12:11,23–
24/577). Thus the final outcome will do justice to immediacy, but
without taking it for granted, as Being does.

.. Introduction to Essence: Being-in-and-for-self

In his introduction to Book Two, the Doctrine of Essence, Hegel de-
scribes knowledge that seeks “the true” or “what being is in and for
itself” as not stopping at the immediate and its determinations, but
penetrating to its “background,” finding the essence through the me-
diation of “inwardizing or recollecting” (Erinnerung) (WL 6:13/GW
156 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

11:241,15/389). Referring back to Plato’s anamnesis (“recollection”),

“Erinnerung” is meant to suggest a correspondingly major piece of
cognitive progress.6
Contrary to what the comparison with Plato might suggest, how-
ever, Hegel immediately points out that this penetrating or inwardiz-
ing is not just something that knowledge does, it is not just cogni-
tive progress; rather, it is “the movement of being, itself” (WL6:13/
GW 11:241,25/389). It is what we have watched being doing in the
course of the Doctrine of Being, as one external feature after another –
quality, quantity, measure – is superseded, and we’re left with the “inner
specifying unity” or essence. By “inwardizing itself through its own nature,”
being “becomes essence” (WL6:13/GW 11:241,26–27/389; emphasis
added).
Hegel gives a very interesting explanation of why we shouldn’t think
of the “inwardizing or recollecting” that produces essence as primarily
something that is done by or in a mind, as such. The “essence” that
is produced by a process of abstraction that is imposed upon being by
something other than itself (that is, by the reflection engaged in by a
mind), Hegel says,

is neither in itself nor for itself; what it is, it is through an other, the external,
abstractive reflection; and it is for an other, namely for abstraction and, in
general, for the affirmative being [Seiende] that remains confronting it. Its
character [Bestimmung], therefore, is the dead, empty lack of character.
(WL 6:14/GW 11:242,16–21/390)

Hegel’s point, here, is in one respect the same as his point against the
spurious infinity and his point against quality (with its dependence on
negation): that whatever is determined by its relation to what it is not, is
not determined by itself, and is, to that extent, “dead.” He is not, how-
ever, simply appealing to the need to be immediate, and thus “real” – he
is not simply appealing to the opposite of negation (namely, immedi-
acy or self-determination), as a presumed absolute value. Rather, he is
saying that if something combined self-determination (being-for-self)
with indifference to all determination (being-in-itself), it would clearly be

6 Another term that Hegel uses for this “inwardizing” is “going into itself ” (Insichgehen)
(WL 6:13/389), which is a close relative of the “being-within-itself ” (Insichsein) that he
found, in Quality, in the “something” that negated its negation in the attempt to achieve
“reality” – to have its quality by virtue of itself rather than by virtue of its relations to
others – and that he then called “the beginning of the subject” (5: 123/115; emphasis
added). So we can expect to find important connections between essence and what
Hegel will later explicitly discuss as the Subject.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 157

truer (less problematic) than the being that is entangled with problems
of negation versus immediacy and self-determination, because it would
embody what is true in both sides of that problem:

Essence as it has here come to be . . . is being that is in-and-for-itself

[Anundfürsichsein]; it is absolute being-in-itself in that it is indifferent to
all determinateness of being, and otherness and relation-to-other have
been completely superseded. . . . [B]ut it is equally essentially being-for-self;
it is itself this negativity, the self-supersession of otherness and determi-
nateness.
(WL 6:14/GW 11:242,22–31/390)

In “Quality,” being-in-itself (Ansichsein) embodied immediacy and the

project of “reality” as self-determination; but taken by itself (as “ab-
solute”), being-in-itself is simply indifferent to determination: It says,
determinate quality (negation) is not what I am. I am something more
ultimate than it is. In that sense, being in itself is “indifferent to all
determinateness of being.” But essence, Hegel says, is not just being-in-
itself; it is also “the self-supersession of otherness and determinateness”:
It is the process by which quality (negation) and quantity and measure
have demonstrated their inadequacy, and been replaced (ultimately)
by their “inner specifying unity.” (Hegel refers to this process as “nega-
tivity,” because, like the original “negation of the negation,” the “some-
thing,” it results from the repeated application of negation, on the
categorial level.) Essence, then, is the unity of these two features: indif-
ference to all determinateness of being, and the self-supersession of these
determinatenesses of being. That is, it embodies what was true in being-
in-itself (namely, indifference to all determination), together with what
was true in being-for-self, or the project of self-determination (namely,
the supersession of all determinateness, its replacement by an “inner
specifying unity”). Understood in this way, essence embodies the truth
both of the beginning of “Being,” and of its end: It epitomizes what hap-
pened in “Being.”
The conception of essence or “Erinnerung” as the product of a process
of “abstraction” – as something happening in or produced by a mind –
on the other hand, would fall entirely within the domain of Being, since
(as Hegel points out) it would determine essence by contrast to, as the
negation of, what “remains confronting it” (WL 6:14/GW 11:242,19–
20/390), and determination by negation is, precisely, the characteristic
of “quality.” That’s why the conception of essence as “being-in-and-for-
self” – as the product not of cognition, as such, but of the “infinite
motion of being” (ibid.) (which, of course, can then be retraced by
158 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

cognition) – is preferable. It takes account of the whole argument of

“Being” in a way that the other conception does not. Consequently,
“being-in-and-for-self” becomes Hegel’s standard way of referring to
the nature and inner articulation of essence: how it epitomizes the
upshot of “Being.”
Hegel’s next point about essence as “being-in-and-for-self” is that,
while it is initially undetermined (since all the previous forms of deter-
mination have been superseded, in producing it),

it must go over into determinate being [Dasein]; for it is being-in-and-for-

self; that is, it differentiates the determinations that are implicit [an sich] in
it. Because it is self-repelling or indifferent to itself, a negative relation
to itself, it sets itself over against itself and is infinite being-for-self only in so
far as it is unity with itself in this its difference from itself.
(WL 6:15/GW 11:242, 36–4/390; emphasis added)

Why does being-in-and-for-self differentiate the determinations that are

implicit in it? This follows from the “being-for-self” part of its formula.
I said that in “being-in-and-for-self,” the “being-for-self” part refers to
the whole project of self-determination (within the Doctrine of Being),
in the course of which, as it unfolds, quality, quantity, and measure are
all superseded. But these “determinations” can only be superseded if
they have been present. When Hegel describes being-in-and-for-self as
“negativity” and “the self-supersession of otherness and determinate-
ness” (WL 6:14/GW 11:242/390, quoted two paragraphs back), he
describes it as involving that otherness and determinateness in an es-
sential way: It does not “abstract from” them; rather, it is their own
“self-supersession.”7 Consequently, like true infinity in relation to the
finite that goes beyond itself, being-in-and-for-self depends upon prior
developments, even as it goes beyond them. Thus it must have – it must,
in part, be – determinations. It must “set itself over against itself” and
be “unity with itself in this its difference from itself.”
Frequently in the final pages of the Doctrine of Being in the first
edition of WL, and also in the final sentence of the Doctrine of Being
in the second edition, Hegel refers to the “indifference” that is turning
into essence as a “Selbständigkeit,” “self-standingness,” independence,
or self-sufficiency (WL 5:457/GW 21:382,15/385; WLfe 225–231). A

7 Emphasis added. In the “Transition to Essence,” at the end of Being, Hegel wrote that “it
is the very nature of the differences of this unity to supersede themselves, with the result
that their unity proves to be absolute negativity” (WL 5:456/384).
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 159

self-sufficient essence must, in effect, contain the determinations that

it supersedes. (Negativity and true infinity were similarly self-sufficient,
in that they did not rely on others or “point beyond themselves” as
the finite did.) As Hegel points out, however, these determinations
will no longer be products of “becoming” or “transition” or “relation
to an other,” as they were in Being; now they will be “self-standing,
but . . . only in their unity with one another” (WL 6:15/GW 11:242,11–
12/390; emphasis added). The Doctrine of Essence will develop this
“unity,” first of all under the headings of “shine” and “reflection.”
The movement of essence, Hegel says in the final paragraph of his in-
troduction, will be for it to “become, as infinite being-for-self, what it is
in itself” (WL 6:16/GW 11:243/391). Initially, essence is being-in-and-
for-self only “in the determination of being-in-itself”; as it “gives itself its
determinate being, which is equal to its being-in-itself” it “becomes the
Concept” (ibid.). Essence gives us a glimpse of what the Concept will
be, but only (as St. Paul wrote) “through a glass, darkly.” When being
has been “restored, but as its infinite mediation and negativity in itself”
(WL 6: 269/GW 12:29/596) – that is, as manifesting essence – then
we will see the Concept clearly. The key appearance of “infinite” in all
of these formulations – in essence’s becoming “infinite being-for-self”
(WL 6:15/GW 11:242/390 and WL 6:16/GW 11:243,37/391), and in
the description of the Concept as containing being’s “infinite media-
tion and negativity in itself” (WL 6: 269/GW 12:29/596) – suggests, as
I have suggested before, that what is being worked out here is a form
of “infinity” (one that will not be prone to “collapsing” into atomism).
In “differentiating the determinations that are implicit in it,” and thus
“giving itself its determinate being, which is equal to its being-in-itself,”
essence sets up precisely the relation of identity-in-difference between
the finite (determinate being) and the infinite that constitutes true
infinity. But it will do so, this time, with a vocabulary of “existence,”
“actuality,” “necessity,” “substance,” “cause and effect,” and “recipro-
cal action,” which will render the identity more concrete than it was
previously.

.. Essence as Shine and Negativity: Hegel’s New Conception of

Immediacy or Being, and his Critique of “the Given”
In his first chapter on Essence, entitled “Shine” (Schein), Hegel repeats
his warning that essence must not be taken as simply in contrast to
being – as being’s “first negation” – since that would make essence
160 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

itself a determinate being. Essence is supposed to be “the absolute neg-

ativity” (that is, the negation of the negation) of being, “being that
has superseded itself both as immediate being and also as immediate
negation, as negation that is burdened with otherness” (WL 6: 19/
GW 11:245–246/395; emphasis added). So when essence is understood
correctly as “absolute negativity” (the negation of the negation), nei-
ther being nor determinate being has preserved itself as something
other than essence, and “the immediate that still is distinguished from
essence is . . . an immediate that is in and for itself null [nichtig]; it is only
a non-essence [Unwesen], shine [Schein]” (WL 6: 19/GW 11:246/395).
Hegel connects this nullity, this “shine” – Schein is an untranslat-
able German word that implies a not-necessarily-illusory appearance of
something8 and that lends itself to metaphors of “shining” and “reflec-
tion” – with the “given,” the “data” that both the idealisms of Leibniz,
Kant, and Fichte, and the skepticism of Gottlob Ernst Schulze that crit-
icizes those idealisms’ claims to knowledge, agree would be the basis
of justifiable knowledge claims (if there were any justifable knowledge
claims) about the world. The connection is through the fact that both
the “given” and the “shine” are dependent upon something other than
themselves, not for their determinateness, but for their being. Being
in themselves “null,” all that they have is immediate determinateness:
Thus shine is what scepticism calls ‘phenomenon,’ and what idealism calls
‘appearance’ [Erscheinung]: an immediacy which is not a something or a
thing, not in general an indifferent being that would still be, apart from
its determinateness and connection with the subject. . . . This content,
therefore, may well have no being, no thing or thing-in-itself at its base; it
remains on its own account as it is; the content has only been translated
from being into shine, so that the latter has within itself those manifold
determinatenesses, which are immediate, beings [seiende], and mutually
related as others. Shine, therefore, is itself immediately determinate. It can
have this or that content; but whatever content it has, it does not posit
this content itself, but has it immediately.
(WL 5: 20/GW 11:246–247/396)

8 Schein is untranslatable because English standardly translates Erscheinung as “appearance,”

and has no other word for Schein. A. V. Miller’s “illusory being,” is misleading: There is
nothing particularly illusory about Schein. In his introduction to the WL, Hegel contrasts
the “deceptions” and “illusions” of “subjective Schein,” as it is pictured by those who don’t
appreciate the true importance of the dialectic, to the “objectivity of Schein,” which belongs
to what the “thought-determinations” (that is, the “categories”) “are in reason and in
regard to that which is in itself ” (WL 5:52/GW 21:40/56; emphasis added). So we seem
to be stuck with the transliterated approximation, “shine.”
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 161

Readers familiar with anglophone philosophy may think, in connec-

tion with these “manifold determinatenesses” that depend upon the
“subject” for their existence and “may well have no being, no thing
or thing-in-itself at [their] base,” of the “ideas” or “impressions” that
Locke, Berkeley and Hume write about, and the “sense-data” of later,
“logical” empiricism (Ayer, Carnap). It would be appropriate also to
think of W. V. O. Quine’s and especially of Wilfrid Sellars’s critiques
of these supposedly “given” ingredients in knowledge.9 Kant’s concep-
tion of a sensible “intuition” as a necessary ingredient in any knowledge
of the world seems to contain a final remnant of this idea of a realm
of content that is directly, immediately given to the knower. Although
Kant insists that without “concepts,” this content is “blind” (A51/B75),
it nevertheless lends something that is somehow indispensable. Presum-
ably, then, this content is determinate in some way that is relevant to the
knowledge that is to be based on it or involve it; and such a determinacy
is, evidently, immediate – not itself mediated by concepts or anything
other than itself. What is Hegel’s objection to this idea of “immediate
determinacy”?
His original objection – implicit in his analysis of “quality” – to the
idea of immediate determinacy was that qualities are determined only
by their contrast to (by their “negation” of) other qualities, and there-
fore their determinacy is not immediate. The attempt to understand
quality as nevertheless “real” (by virtue of itself, rather than by virtue of
relationships to others) led Hegel eventually to bracket the whole idea
of quality, including its revised incarnation in Measure. Whatever de-
terminacy quality represents must be a moment within a larger whole,
which we’re now calling “essence.” Now that a supposedly immediate
determinacy has been resurrected in the form of “shine,” Hegel ar-
gues that when immediacy is understood in a way that is appropriate
to the sphere of essence, the immediacy of shine is in fact identical
with essence, which makes it a “mediated . . . immediacy” (WL 6:22/GW
11:248,34/397; emphasis added) and not, therefore, something that
can be taken simply at face value.
His final argument for this conclusion is in two parts, of which the
first argues that “absolute negativity” (that is, essence) is immediacy

9 W. V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in his From a Logical Point of View

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961); Wilfrid S. Sellars, Empiricism and the Phi-
losophy of Mind (first published 1956) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
An important recent discussion of this issue, with reference both to Kant and to Hegel,
is John MacDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
162 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

(shine), and the second argues that shine is absolute negativity.10 Taken
together, these imply that immediacy (shine) is in fact identical with
negativity, and thus it is mediated (since negativity is a complex in-
volving the negation of an initial negation, and thus incorporates two
“mediations” within itself). The first part of Hegel’s final argument is
as follows:
The negativity [of essence] is negativity in itself; it is its relation to itself
and is thus in itself immediacy (1). But it is negative self-relation, a negat-
ing that is a repelling of itself, and the immediacy that is in itself is thus
the negative or the determined, over against this negativity (2).
(WL 6:22/GW 11:248/398)

Essence’s negativity relates to itself because it is being’s “going into

itself” or “Erinnerung” (WL 6:13/GW 11:241,15 and 33/389). As a re-
lation to itself, it can’t be mediated by anything else, so it is imme-
diate (1). It is a “negative self-relation” – it “repels” itself into some-
thing over against itself – because it is “being-in-and-for-self,” which
requires determinations that are “self-standing” (albeit in unity with
each other), as Hegel said in his introduction to Essence (WL 6:15/GW
11:242,11/390) and as I explained in the previous section. So essence
is, or becomes, shine (2).
The second, and crucial part of Hegel’s final argument – namely, his
argument that shine is absolute negativity – goes as follows:
Shine is the negative that has a being, but in an other, in its negation;
it is the non-self-standingness which is overtly/manifestly [an ihr] super-
seded and null (1). As such, it is the negative returned into itself, the non-
self-standing [das Unselbständige] as overtly/manifestly non-self-standing
(2). This self-relation of the negative or the non-self-standingness is its
immediacy; the self-relation is an other than the negative itself; it is the neg-
ative’s determinateness against itself, or it is the negation directed against
the negative. But negation directed against the negative is the negativity
that relates only to itself; it is the absolute superseding of determinateness
itself (3).
(WL 6:22–23/GW 11:248,22–32/398)

Since shine is “in and for itself a nullity” (WL 6:19/GW 11:246,14/
395), whatever being it has is in something other than itself; it is

10 In deciphering these arguments in Hegel’s chapter on “Shine,” I have found Klaus J.

Schmidt, Georg W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik – Die Lehre vom Wesen: Ein einführender
Kommentar (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997) particularly helpful.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 163

“non-self-standing,” and exhibits overtly (an ihr) its supersession and

nullity. By itself, it amounts to nothing (1). Since it exhibits its nullity
overtly, it also exhibits its non-self-standingness overtly; it “returns into
itself” as something negative and non-self-standing. That is, it relates to
itself as something that is negative and non-self-standing (2). Being con-
trasted to its initial negativeness (its initial dependence, for its being,
on something other), this self-relation is an “other” in relation to it (“an
other than the negative itself”). Being an other in relation to its origi-
nal negativeness is negating (contrasting with) its original negativeness
(it is “the negation directed against the negative”). But such a “nega-
tion directed against the negative” is precisely the double negation that
Hegel calls “negativity.” It is, in effect, the “negative unity with itself”
(WL 5:123–124/GW 21:103, 31/115) or the “relation to itself against its
relation to other” (WL 5:128/GW 21:107, 32/119) that constituted “the
beginning of the subject” (WL 5:123/GW 21:103, 27/115), in “Quality.”
Hegel is saying that by relating to itself as something negative (dependent
on an other), and thus having a self-relationship, shine is able to achieve
a status that is not merely negative or merely dependent: It is able, in ef-
fect, to think, to be a thought, a center of subjecthood. And as such a cen-
ter of subjecthood, this “negativity” that shine has become “supersedes
determinateness” (that is, it supersedes the immediate determinate-
ness that shine was initially taken to be) absolutely insofar as it makes the
determinateness a moment within the negativity’s process of self-relationship
(3). And this negativity amounts to the same thing as essence, if essence
is “going-into-itself” or “Erinnerung” (WL 6:13/GW 11:241/389). By re-
lating to itself as something negative, or null (which it does by exhibiting
its nullity overtly [an ihr]), shine becomes thought or subjectivity, neg-
ativity or being-in-and-for-self, and thus seems not to be a mere nullity.
This is Hegel’s most fundamental point about shine, or immediate de-
terminateness.
Drawing the consequences of this double argument together, Hegel
concludes:
So the determinateness that shine is in essence, is infinite determinateness;
it is only the negative that goes together with itself ; so it is the determinateness
which as such is self-standingness and is not determinate (1). – Conversely,
the self-standingness, as self-related immediacy, is equally sheer determinate-
ness and moment and is only as self-related negativity (2). – This negativity
that is identical with immediacy, and thus the immediacy that is identical
with negativity, is essence (3).
(WL6:23/GW 11:248,33–2/398; emphasis added)
164 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

I mentioned in the previous section that in the final sections of the

Doctrine of Being, Hegel uses “self-standingness” or “self-sufficiency”
(Selbständigkeit) as equivalent to “indifference,” which (especially in the
revised edition of WL) is the final form of “unity” (subsequent to “mea-
sure”) in the Doctrine of Being, anticipating and leading into “essence.”
Hegel does this because the conclusion of the Doctrine of Being is that
none of the forms of determinacy that it has considered – namely,
quality, quantity, and measure – makes sense, when taken simply on
its own terms, so something that is “self-standing” or “self-sufficient”
without them must be preserved, and further developed. So the “self-
standingness” that Hegel refers to here is essence, taken in itself (and
thus as “not determinate”). And what he says in sentence (1) in the
passage just quoted, is that the second half of his double argument has
shown that the determinateness that shine is, is this essence. When shine
“goes together with itself,” it is or becomes self-standingness, which is
essence. In sentence (2), he goes on to say that the first half of his
double argument has shown, conversely, that this “self-standingness”
is “sheer determinateness,” or shine, because essence “is” only insofar
as it is or becomes self-related negativity, and thus determinateness, or
shine. The moral of (1) and (2) taken together is the statement in
(1) that the kind of determinateness that is in question, here, is a new
kind – namely, “infinite determinateness.” In what way is this determi-
nateness “infinite”? It is “the negative that goes together with itself ” – that
is, the negative that forms something new, something that is not “null,”
through its relation to itself. What it forms, and the determinateness
that it takes on, are infinite in that they are self-contained, self-standing,
not dependent on or limited by something other than themselves.
This double movement by which, as Hegel now says, “negativity . . . is
identical with immediacy,” and “immediacy . . . is identical with nega-
tivity,” and which constitutes “essence” (3), is very reminiscent of the
double movement in true infinity, in which “finitude is only as a tran-
scending of itself” and “infinity is only as a transcending of the finite”
(WL 5: 160/GW 21:133/145–146). Here, in Essence, negativity has
taken over the central role that was played by being, in the Doctrine of
Being, and so we are being given an account of how negativity becomes
determinate, just as in Being we got an account of how being became
determinate. And the way negativity becomes determinate, through a
two-way movement between it and shine or immediacy, parallels the
way in which being became determinate through a two-way movement
between the finite and the infinite. As I indicated in the introduction to
this chapter, Essence seems to be the beginning of the process whereby
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 165

the Logic will resurrect true infinity on a more stable basis than its ini-
tial one. It is because of this parallel and this connection, I take it, that
Hegel calls the new kind of determinateness that he has now identi-
fied, “infinite determinateness.” Quality was determined by negation;
quantity was determined by indifference (“quantum is the indifferent
determinacy, . . . the determinacy that goes beyond itself, negates itself”
[WL 5:210/GW 21:174, 33–35/185]); measure was determined in a
way that involved “identity with itself,” and was thus “mediated with
itself” (WL 5:390/GW 21:326, 28–30/329–330), and in itself “being-
in-and-for-self,” or essence (WL 5:391/GW 21:326, 37/330). Essence
itself is “posited as” mediation with itself or being-in-and-for-self (ibid.);
this is what we are seeing in the analysis of essence and shine that we
have been following. Essence’s determinateness, shine, is determined
by its mediation with itself or its being-in-and-for-self – which amounts
to negativity, or double negation. Hegel expresses it this way:

Shine, therefore, is essence itself, but essence in a determinateness, but

in such a way that the determinateness is only essence’s moment, and
essence [itself] is the shining of itself within itself.
(WL 6:23/GW 11:249,3–5/398; emphasis added)

Essence’s determinateness is a moment within essence. What deter-

mines it is a process that takes place entirely within essence, which
Hegel evokes with the metaphor of “shining within itself.” (Hegel also
describes essence as a “movement from nothing to nothing” [WL 6:24/GW
11:249,15/400], in order to emphasize the absence of free-standing
“others” that would be the starting and ending points of its movement.)
Essence’s determinateness is “infinite” not in the sense that it goes be-
yond essence (which is something that Hegel is making very clear that
it does not do), but rather in the sense that it is built around negativity,
“identity with itself,” “being-in-and-for-self,” and so on; that is, essence’s
determinateness is built around a kind of proto-selfhood, which en-
ables it to supersede the domain of negation, finitude, and indifference,
in something very like the way that true infinity superseded finitude:
through a double movement that includes it, while going beyond it. It is
important to see that this proto-selfhood is not “subjective” in the sense
of being a mere content in a mind or minds (which are taken to exist
independently of their contents), or in the sense that there is no basis
for regarding it as objective. There is plenty of room, within Hegel’s
conception, for distinctions between subjective illusion and objective
reality, as he will make clear in the remainder of the Doctrine of Essence.
166 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

But the essence of that objective reality will always be the negativity or
being-in-and-for-self that I am describing as a proto-selfhood.
How does the position that Hegel has arrived at constitute a cri-
tique of the immediately “given,” in scepticism and idealism (and
empiricism) – the topic with which Hegel began his discussion of
shine? Hegel’s argument criticizes the immediately “given” by show-
ing (as I’ve just been saying) that in the context of “essence,” as
arrived at by the Doctrine of Being’s successive critiques of quality,
quantity, and measure, the only intelligible conception of an “imme-
diate” is of a “mediated or reflected immediacy . . . – being not as be-
ing, but . . . as a moment,” within essence (WL 6:22/GW 11:248,33–
36/397). So-called immediacy, Hegel concludes, is always mediated
by what it is a moment within; so that, as he says in an often-quoted
remark in the introduction to the Doctrine of Being, “There is noth-
ing in heaven or in nature or spirit or anywhere else that does not
equally contain both immediacy and mediation, so that these two de-
terminations reveal themselves to be unseparated and inseparable and
the opposition between them to be a nullity” (WL 5:66/GW 21:54,
23–28/68).11 This is the upshot of the double-sided argument that I
analyzed earlier, with its conclusion that negativity is immediacy and
immediacy is negativity. A defender of scepticism or empiricism or

11 Some scholars have taken Hegel’s new treatment of “immediacy,” in his chapter on
“Shine,” as representing a change in the meaning that he had previously attached to
immediacy, in the course of the Doctrine of Being, and thus as raising doubts about
whether the argument that he presents in the Doctrines of Being and Essence is in-
ternally consistent (see Dieter Henrich, “Hegels Logik der Reflexion,” in his Hegel im
Kontext [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971], pp. 111–112, and Christian Iber, Die Meta-
physik absoluter Relationalität [Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990], pp. 91–93). However,
Hegel remarks in his introduction to the Doctrine of Being that “simple immediacy is
itself a term deriving from the analysis of reflection [ein Reflexionsausdruck] and refers
to the difference [Unterschied] from what is mediated. So when it is truly [i.e., more
correctly] expressed, this simple immediacy is pure being” [and not “simple immediacy”]
(WL 5:68/GW 21:55/69). What he is saying is that immediacy is a concept that is not
defined in the Doctrine of Being, but only – via the concept of “difference” (between the
immediate and the mediated) – in the analysis of “reflection” that is part of the Doc-
trine of Essence. So even if “immediacy” always seemed, in the Doctrine of Being, to be
associated (say) with ontological independence and simplicity, we should be prepared
for the possibility that these associations were coincidental, due only to the special subject
matter of the Doctrine of Being, and are not (and never were) features of the concept of
immediacy itself. This, I think, is what Hegel’s introduction to Essence, now, is telling us
is the case, which is why he can introduce a “new” analysis of the concept of immediacy,
in the Doctrine of Essence, without altering a meaning that the concept previously had.
If this is what he is doing, there is room for him to analyze “immediacy” now in a way
that does not entail ontological independence or simplicity. He is providing an account
of the reality that appeared to us, in the Doctrine of Being, in a misleading way.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 167

transcendental idealism who wants to reply that her conception of the

“given” (as, for example, in Kant’s “sensible intuitions”) does not make it
an instance of quality, quantity, measure, or “negativity,” so that Hegel’s
conclusion does not apply to it, will have to explain what category her
“given” does fall within, and how that category differs from those that
Hegel has analyzed, in such a way as to escape his criticisms of them and
his conclusion. With regard to Kant, in particular: If my argument in
the third paragraph of this section is correct – that Kant’s conception of
the role of sensible “intuitions” in knowledge depends upon ascribing
some sort of immediate determinacy to those intuitions, when they are
taken by themselves – then this argument in “Shine” for the conclu-
sion that immediacy must be negativity, and thus must be mediated,
seems to represent a significant objection to Kant’s conception. The
crux of Hegel’s objection to Kant, on this point, is in his argument that
by relating to itself as something negative in comparison to being – the
relating that it does by exhibiting its nullity overtly (an ihm) – shine (the
“immediately given”) becomes a self-standing negativity, or (in effect)
thought or subjectivity, and thus is necessarily complex and mediated,
rather than simply immediate. Hegel is describing the phenomenon
of “givenness” as itself, by its very existence, embodying thought. By
presenting itself as “given” to a subject (rather than as an independently
existing reality), the “given” takes a stand about its own nature, and thus
constitutes a thought. But the nature of a thought is that it seeks coherence
with itself, and thus is mediated, rather than simply being “given.” In
this way, the idea of “givenness” itself undermines the process of re-
duction to something immediate and prior to thought, of which it is
generally (though, in Kant’s case, not unambiguously) supposed to be a
part. As Hegel says in introducing the Concept, “In the order of nature,
intuition or being are undoubtedly first, or are a condition for the Con-
cept, but they are not on that account the absolutely unconditioned;
on the contrary, their reality is superseded in the Concept and with it,
also, the shine they possessed as the conditioning reality” (WL 6:260/
GW 12:22,39–5/588). We saw, in the argument to true infinity in Being,
one way in which the “natural” can be superseded, and here in Shine we
see another. (Both supersessions evidently generate as their outcome
something that is akin to thought.) Any comprehensive assessment of
Hegel’s critique of Kant, on the issue of concept versus intuition, must
identify and evaluate this argument.12

12 This objection to Kant’s conception of sensible intuitions as immediately determinate is

one that Paul Guyer does not consider in the important papers (which I cited in note 2
168 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

A thorough-going defender of egoism who seeks to avoid Hegel’s

conclusions in the Doctrine of the Concept by cutting Hegel’s argu-
ment short at the beginning of Essence, will also have to explain how
Hegel’s criticisms of quantity and measure could be dealt with with-
out accepting the revised conception of being or determinateness, as
“self-standingness” and negativity, that Hegel takes to be the only avail-
able recourse at this point. Doing this will be especially difficult for an
egoist who is aware of the way in which selfhood, normativity, or go-
ing beyond contingent finite inclinations, is implicit in her conception
of the “ego’s” practical reasoning, insofar as the ego’s preoccupation
with itself (its own self-preservation, its satisfaction of its own desires),
as its defining concern, already involves going beyond mere inertia or
mere response to a desire, as such, toward an orientation to selfhood.
Hegel’s argument against the supposed immediacy of “shine,” and for
the conclusion that shine is actually negativity and “essence,” is an ar-
gument not only against prior idealisms, and so on (as epistemological
positions), but also against theories of practical reasoning as the pur-
suit of desire-satisfaction, insofar as such theories overlook the role of
selfhood, and thus of thought, in their own conception of practical
reasoning, when they presume that an “ego’s” preoccupation with it-
self (with what is its “own”) requires no special explanation. Hegel’s
argument shows how selfhood – and thus, implicitly, the project of go-
ing beyond finite inclinations – is already implicit in having a desire
that one relates to as deserving one’s attention because it is one’s own
desire.
There is no denying that Hegel’s conception of essence as a kind of
proto-selfhood is a challenging and (no doubt, to many people) an out-
landish one. It embodies, implicitly, the identity of subject and object,
or the primacy of the (subject-) Concept, that will become explicit at the
end of the Doctrine of Essence. (That is why it is important to get a clear
understanding of essence right away, since we can’t hope to understand
the Concept, and the transition to it, without understanding what that
transition proceeds from.) I hope I have said enough about the nature
of “essence” and the problems that it’s supposed to address to make it
at least plausible that Hegel might be right in thinking that it is, in fact,
the only available recourse, here. To make Hegelian idealism, in general,

to Chapter 3) in which he defends Kant’s dualism of concept and intuition against

some of Hegel’s criticisms. For some of the history of this debate, see 3.21 and, on other
aspects of Paul Guyer’s critique, note 58 to that section of Chapter 3.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 169

plausible, I recommend again the thought articulated in “Quality,” that

something that is self-determining is more real, because it is more self-
sufficient, than something that is not; together with the experience
that we seem to have, of being more self-determining at some times
than at others, so that it’s not unreasonable to regard the “ought,” and
self-determination through the transcendence of finitude, as real possi-
bilities. I also find persuasive the additional argument that I have been
teasing out of the chapter on “Shine,” that givenness, as such, already
involves thought, so that the idea of a simply “given” set of sensible intu-
itions is incoherent. We find the idea of a simply “given” set of sensible
intuitions unproblematic only because we confuse the occurrence of
sensation as a physical process (which presents no particular problem,
in the present context) with the occurrence of a cognitive input, some-
thing having meaning or content. It is as the latter that “shine” presents
itself as a “nullity,” something dependent entirely upon the subject, and
thus presents itself as a thought, and thus as non-“immediate.”

.. Essence as Reflection

“Reflection” is Hegel’s term for shine that is no longer viewed as
immediate, but rather as “alienated from its immediacy” (WL 6:24/
GW 11:249,28/399), by the arguments that we have been considering.
Hegel describes this reflection as a “movement of becoming and tran-
sition that remains within itself” (WL 6:24/GW 11:249,30–31/399),
because – as we saw in the final block quotation in the previous section –
essence’s determinateness is entirely within essence, it is a moment
of essence. It is “reflection” not as the subjective activity of a mind
(whose existence is prior to that of the activity), but rather as an objec-
tive event or process, constituting reality, which is “reflective” in that it
is reflected off (as it were) the inner surface of essence, because what
it creates is a moment of essence, rather than something other than
essence.
This “reflection” takes three forms: It is “positing” [setzende], “ex-
ternal,” or “determining” reflection. For Fichte, who popularized the
term, “positing” (Setzen) is always an activity of the I, or the self. Hegel
initially approaches positing not from the side of that which posits but
from the side of that which is posited: “positedness, immediacy purely as
determinacy or as reflecting itself” (WL 6:26/GW 11:251,31–33/401;
emphasis added). This “reflecting itself” he also refers to as the “return
of the negative into itself” (ibid.): Because reflection is entirely within
170 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

essence, there is no “other” on hand (as there was in Determinate Be-

ing) to determine the something through negation, so the determining
that occurs, in shine, implies a “return” (that is, a return to essence it-
self, rather than, as in Determinate Being, a “transition” to an other).
This “return” implies the sense that what is returned into – namely,
essence – is in some way responsible for, or creates (“posits”) the imme-
diate. However, Hegel now points out – in an argument that is crucial for
his entire account of “reflection” – that as a “return,” immediacy is non-
immediate, and thus the negative of itself; but reflection supersedes the
negative of itself (because as essence it cannot create an “other” that will
stand over against itself, on pain of falling back into Being’s pattern of
transition into the “other,” and thus failing to be essence); so reflection
supersedes its “positing,” the activity by which it (as essence) thought of
itself as creating the immediate (WL 6:26–27/GW 11:251,13–18/401).
The relationship that reflection puts in the place of that positing of the
immediate, in order to supersede it, Hegel calls “positing in advance ”
(Voraussetzen) (also often translated as “presupposing”). “Positing in
advance” suggests positing something as pre-existing or independent,
rather than as created by oneself. “Reflection into itself,” Hegel then
says, “is essentially the positing in advance of that from which it is the
return” (WL 6:27/GW 11:251,27–28/401): It regards that from which
it is the return as independent of itself, so as not (contrary to its nature
as “essence”) to have created something that is independent of (“other”
than) itself.
Positing the immediate in advance as something not posited, how-
ever, makes reflection “determined” (WL 6:28/GW 11:252,26/402) –
determined by its relationship to this other which is not posited. A re-
flection of this kind, Hegel calls “external reflection” (ibid.). Examining
it more closely, Hegel writes that external reflection
is immediately . . . the superseding of this, its positing; for it posits the im-
mediate in advance: in negating, it is the negating of this, its negating (1).
But in doing so it is immediately just as much positing, superseding the im-
mediate that is negative in relation to it; and this immediate, from which
it seemed to start as from something alien, is only in this, its [external
reflection’s] starting (2).
(WL 6:29/GW 11:253,33–39/403–404)

Positing reflection posits something immediate, and thus “negates”

this immediate thing, by making it depend on its relation to external
reflection; but then as external reflection, it supersedes its own positing
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 171

of the immediate, by positing it “in advance,” as something that is not

posited. This superseding negates the initial negating (1). In positing
the immediate thing as something that does not depend upon it, and
thus negating its original negating, external reflection “supersedes the
immediate that is negative in relation to it”; but superseding negation,
in this way, is precisely the task of essence or reflection, as such, and thus exter-
nal reflection’s doing this is itself a way of positing the thing (compare
WL 6:26–27/GW 11:251,15–18/401). So the immediate that seemed
to constitute an “alien” starting point for it (because it posited this
immediate “in advance,” as something that is not posited by it), is nev-
ertheless posited by it (2)! Thus it is evident, Hegel says, that “external
reflection is not [merely] external, but just as much the immanent re-
flection of immediacy itself ” (WL 6:30/GW 11:254,10–11/404; emphasis
added).
This argument works because in its effort to categorize the immedi-
ate thing as something that does not depend upon it in any way (the
effort that Hegel calls “positing in advance ”), so as to avoid putting it-
self in the position of creating something that is independent of itself
and thus negative in relation to and therefore dependent upon itself,
external reflection is doing the fundamental task of reflection or
essence as such, which is to leave the logic of Being behind it by “super-
seding the immediate that is negative in relation to” itself. That it does
this by acknowledging (“positing in advance”) the existence of some-
thing that is independent of itself does not alter this fact. We may tend to
assume that “idealism” will involve declaring the dependence of specific
objects of knowledge on the knower, or in this case, of what is posited
on the “positor,” essence. But what Hegel argues here is that a true pos-
itor – one whose positing is understood in a way that is in keeping with
the argument of the Doctrine of Being – will do everything possible
to make what it “posits” independent of itself; that acknowledging the
independent existence of the posited (positing it “in advance”) is the
most that it can do to that end; but that doing that amounts, in fact,
to the “immanent reflection of immediacy itself,” insofar as it reflects the
lesson of the analysis of immediacy as being (in the Doctrine of Being),
that because “independently existing” things are logically determined
by their contrasts with each other (by their “negation” of each other
or their “limit” in relation to each other), the only way for something
to be truly independent is for it to go “beyond” or “into” itself, in the
manner of infinity or essence, and thus to understand itself in terms of
reflection and positing.
172 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

So the “externality” of external reflection, in relation to the imme-

diate – the presumption that what essence posits “in advance” is in
fact external to essence – has been superseded (WL 6:30/GW 11:253,5–
6/404).13 The importance of Hegel’s critique and superseding of
“external reflection” can hardly be overstated. They will be repeated
in new forms within his account of the “reflection-determinations”: as
the critique and superseding of mere “diversity” (Verschiedenheit) via Op-
position, Contradiction and Ground; in the Doctrine of the Concept
as the critique and superseding of “mechanism” via Chemism, Teleol-
ogy, Life, and Cognition; in the Philosophy of Nature, as the critique and
superseding of mere “side-by-sideness” (Aussereinander) in space and
time via natural individuality, natural subjectivity, and Spirit; and in the
Philosophy of Spirit, as the critique and superseding of the dividedness of
Consciousness by Self-consciousness and Recognition. Taken together,
these critiques and supersedings constitute Hegel’s reply to rational
egoism, the challenge that we saw him posing for himself at the end
of “Quality.” So it is vital that we understand how they work. His cri-
tique of external reflection, as we saw, depends crucially on his prior
account of determinate being and negativity, when it identifies external
reflection’s project of “positing in advance” as itself a form of negativity, of
essence or positing, and thus not as assuming something “alien” to reflec-
tion, but rather as the “immanent reflection of immediacy itself.” It’s
only because negativity, essence, and positing have preceded external
reflection, that external reflection can be criticized and superseded in
this way. So Hegel’s criticism of the “common-sense” ontology that is
represented by external reflection is effective only in this context, which
he has constructed for it. Critics of Hegel’s critique of common sense
(of what he calls “the understanding,” Verstand) are often frustrated by
what seem like undefended assumptions, in his various statements of
that critique.14 The critique that we are looking at here does in fact pre-
suppose a great deal: It presupposes the whole critique of immediacy in

13 Hegel makes the same point – that external reflection is also the immanent reflection
of immediacy itself – in his Remark on external reflection, when he says that Kant’s
concept of determining reflection (in the Critique of Judgment) in fact contains “the
concept of absolute reflection; for the universal, the principle or rule and law to which
it advances in its determining, counts as the essence of that immediate which forms
the starting point; and this immediate therefore counts as a nullity, and it is only the
return from it, its determining by reflection, that is the positing of the immediate in
accordance with its true being” (WL 6:31/GW 11:254/405; emphasis added).
14 See note 17 for a couple of examples.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 173

the Doctrine of Being. It doesn’t address common sense conceptions

simply “as such,” in their more or less familiar forms; rather, it addresses
them in the context of, and understood from the point of view of, the
critique of common sense immediacy that has already been carried out
in the Doctrine of Being. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that when it
is isolated from that context and that point of view, the critique of ex-
ternal reflection (and thus of common sense, or the “understanding”)
is not immediately convincing.
The idea of essence as negativity, and thus as a proto-subjectivity that
determines itself or “posits” an immediate that is independent of it and
yet somehow superseded within it, as Hegel’s critique of external reflec-
tion requires, has obvious theological overtones. As with true infinity,
essence and reflection are certainly another stage in Hegel’s analysis of
and proof of God. The theological overtones will be even stronger later
in Essence, with the Absolute, Actuality, and Absolute Necessity. The
Concept and the Idea present the most explicit theology in the WL,
and will provide the best point at which to assess the WL’s contribution
to theology.
Emerging from his critique of external reflection, and supersed-
ing (preserving what was true in) it, Hegel’s third and final attempt
at defining reflection will be “determining reflection,” which he de-
scribes as “the unity of positing and external reflection” (WL 6:32/GW
11:255/405). It shares with positing reflection the idea that essence is,
somehow, active: that it should be understood in terms of an activity
such as “shining” or “positing.” But with external reflection it shares
“absolute positing in advance; that is, the repelling of reflection from
itself, or the positing of the determinateness as determinateness of itself ”
(WL 6:33/GW 11:256,8–10/406). Reflection “repels itself from itself”
by taking the form of the acknowledgment (the “positing in advance”)
of something completely independent of itself – of a “determinateness
of itself” (as opposed to a determinateness through a relationship to
an other).
This combination with external reflection turns “positedness” into
“reflection-determination” (Reflexionsbestimmung) – that is, into a pro-
cess of determination (introduction of determinateness) that embodies
the “self-equality” (WL 6:34/GW 11:256,30/407) that is characteristic
of essence and reflection, as opposed to the “transitory” (ibid.) char-
acter, the proneness to transition into the other, that is characteristic
of determinateness in Being. Reflection-determination, Hegel says, is
“positedness as negation, negation that has negatedness as its ground;
174 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

it is therefore not unequal within itself” (WL 6:33–34/GW 11:256,27–

29/407), in the way that the “transitory” determinateness of quality is
unequal within itself. Reflection-determination is positedness as nega-
tion, because it involves acknowledging determinateness as something
completely independent of itself, which sets up an externality of some-
thing and other, which (according to the analysis in the Doctrine of
Being) are determined as each other’s negation (contrast). Reflection-
determination’s negation has negatedness as its ground, in the sense
that the underlying unity (of internal and external reflection, or of
essence itself) is not “being” (as it was in the case of quality, something
and other), and thus something contrasted to negation, but rather is
essence as negativity, negation of negation (see WL 6: 19/GW 11:245,6–
10/395, and 4.7). So reflection-determination is negation “all the way
down,” and in that sense has “self-equality” and, in fact, “persistence”
(Bestehen) (WL 6:34/GW 11:256,33/407).
The condition of this homogeneity and persistence, however –
of the fact that “the determinate has subjected to itself its transitori-
ness and its mere positedness, or has bent its reflection-into-other
back into reflection-into-self” (WL 34/GW 11:256–257,39–2/407; em-
phasis added), in this way – is that “determining reflection is reflec-
tion that has gotten outside itself; essence’s equality with itself has be-
come lost in the negation, which is the dominant factor” (WL 6:34/
GW 11:257,4–6/407; emphasis added). That is, no sooner has reflec-
tion’s “self-equality” been celebrated as a step beyond the transitoriness
of quality and being than it is declared to be dominated by the negative
relation, the non-equality, between positedness (the contribution of
positing reflection) and the acknowledgement of independence (the
contribution of external reflection). This duality or non-equality will
structure all of the subsequent stages of the Doctrine of Essence, in
the contrasts (for instance) between ground and grounded, between
necessity and contingency, between substance and accident.15 At each
stage, there will be a “going together with itself,” comparable to the
“bending back into reflection-into-self” that Hegel has just described;
but that going together or bending back will be fully successful only in
the (transition to the) triplicity of the Concept.

15 Klaus Schmidt points out this structure in his Georg W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der
Logik – Die Lehre vom Wesen: Ein einführender Kommentar (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997),
p. 57.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 175

.. The Reflection-Determinations: Identity and Difference

In the way that we described in the previous section, “reflection” is
determinate: Its ultimate form, “determining reflection,” yields a
“determinateness that is essential, not transitory” (WL 6:34; GW 11:256,
30/407). Hegel’s next chapter, “The Essentialities or Reflection-
Determinations,” analyzes reflection’s determinateness – much as
Chapter 2 of “Quality” analyzed the determinateness of Dasein. Reflec-
tion’s determinateness takes the form, first, of “Identity,” second, of
“Difference,” and third, of “Contradiction,” which resolves itself into its
“Ground” or underlying reason.
Unlike the sameness (self-equality) of quality in determinate be-
ing, which was accomplished through “transition” into other quali-
ties, essential identity is one that “produces itself to unity”; as nega-
tivity and reflection, it is “pure production out of and in itself: essential
identity.” (WL 6:39/GW 11:260,14–16/411). Hegel now argues that
essential identity is necessarily difference, as well. Essential identity, Hegel
says,

has not arisen through a relative negating that would have taken place out-
side it. . . . On the contrary, being and every determinateness of being has
superseded itself not relatively, but in itself; and this one-fold [einfache]
negativity of being in itself is identity itself.
(WL 6:39/GW 11:260,17–23/411–412; emphasis added)

Identity, as such, requires some form of negation: some form of exclu-

sion of what the item in question is not. But the type of negation that
was characteristic of being and quality – namely, “relative” negation,
negation as a relation to something “other” – has been superseded by
the argument of the Doctrine of Being. So “essential identity” will not
involve a relation to an other. Instead,

As absolute negation [, essential identity] is the negation that immedi-

ately negates itself: a nonbeing and difference [Unterschied] that vanishes
in its arising, or a differentiating [Unterscheiden] by which nothing is dif-
ferentiated, but which immediately collapses into itself. Differentiating
is the positing of nonbeing as the nonbeing of the other. But the nonbe-
ing of the other is a superseding of the other and thus of differentiating
itself. Here, then, differentiating is present as self-related negativity, as a
nonbeing that is the nonbeing of itself, a nonbeing that has its nonbeing
176 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

not in an other but in itself. What is present, therefore, is self-related,

reflected difference, or pure, absolute difference.
(WL 6:40/GW 11:261–262, 23–36/412–413)

Identity is absolute negation because it’s not relative negation, not

negation as a relation to something “other.” So in order to negate
something, it “immediately negates itself.” This makes it a non-being
(something merely posited: see WL 6:21/GW 11:257,19–23/397, and
compare “nullity,” 4.7), or a difference that vanishes as soon as it arises.
But it is, nevertheless, a difference! In fact, Hegel goes on to argue,
it is a pure, absolute difference inasmuch as its non-being is an overt
feature of it: It relates to itself as non-being. So identity has turned out
to be absolute difference. “Difference,” here, is simply spelling out the
process of reflection or internal determination by which essence moves
(as Hegel said earlier) “from nothing to nothing”: Since this process is
in an important way “internal” to essence (it doesn’t involve an “other”
in the sense that was developed in Being), the difference between the
essence that determines itself – the “identity” – and what it determines
itself into has to “vanish.” At the same time, this difference (or differ-
entiating) is what essence is all about, inasmuch as essence has to be
“in and for itself,” has to determine itself (be “for itself”) in order to
be the self-supersession of its determinateness (see 4.6). And insofar as
this difference relates to itself as what it really is (that is, as non-being),
and is self-related negativity, it is everything that identity was, but more
explicitly, and thus it threatens to replace identity.
This is, in fact, the conclusion that Hegel draws in the next
paragraph: Since identity involves an “internal repulsion” by which
essence and determinateness are opposed to each other, and this re-
pulsion is immediately “taken back into itself” insofar as it’s seen as the
implementation of what essence, as such, had to be in any case, identity
is a “difference that is identical with itself.” But difference can be iden-
tical with itself only if it is absolute difference, absolute non-identity.
“So identity is overtly [an ihr selbst] absolute non-identity” (WL 6:40–
41/GW 11:262,37–8/413; emphasis added).
To understand this first and most fundamental conclusion of
Hegel’s controversial and little-understood account of the Reflection-
Determinations, it’s vital to see how it follows from his account of what
essence is, and how essence relates to negativity and true infinity. As I
indicated, the connection flows through his initial account of essence
as “being-in-and-for-self” (WL 6:14/GW 11:242,24–25/390). What was
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 177

left of being at the end of the Doctrine of Being was (1) its ambition to
be “in itself,” and (2) the self-supersessions of its successive determinate-
nesses (as quality, quantity, and measure), these self-supersessions being
the way in which it is “for itself.” Essence, therefore, must likewise be
“for itself,” and in order to do so it must be the self-supersession of some
kind of determinate Dasein. (Essence “itself is this negativity, the self-
supersession of other-being and determinateness” [WL 6:14/ GW 11:
242,30–31/390].) As such a self-supersession, essence is very much a
process rather than an immediately given identity. (This is the main thing
that Hegel’s regular references to essence’s “negativity” are supposed
to remind us of.) And “difference” (as “differentiation”) seems to ex-
hibit this “process” character more effectively than “identity,” as such,
can exhibit it.16 Both as process in general, and as the self-supersession
of determinateness in particular, essence very much resembles true in-
finity, understood as the (ongoing) self-supersession of the finite. We
will bear this “process” character well in mind as we examine the other
“Reflection-Determinations.” If we understand “diversity” (Verschieden-
heit), “opposition” (Gegensatz), and “contradiction” (Widerspruch) as suc-
cessive ways of understanding not “reality” (or discourse about reality)
“as such,” but rather the specific conception of reality that Hegel has now ar-
rived at – namely, reality as the “reflection” relation between essence as
positor and essence as posited, or between essence as such and essence
as determinateness – we will be able to avoid a great deal of confusion
into which readers of these sections tend to fall.17

16 Christian Iber provides a helpful discussion of ways in which Hegel’s account of identity
responds to and criticizes those of Fichte and Schelling (as well as their predecessors),
in his Metaphysik absoluter Relationalität. Eine Studie zu den beiden ersten Kapiteln von Hegels
Wesenslogik (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 293–296.
17 Klaus Düsing accuses Hegel of precisely what I have just praised him for: “That identity is,
in itself, difference, can . . . only be presupposed on the basis of the contradictory structure
of reflection” (Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik [Bonn: Bouvier, 1976], p. 219;
emphasis added). Similarly, regarding Hegel’s later conclusion that “contradiction” has
a “positive” outcome, Düsing writes: “So Hegel did not prove the positive outcome of
contradiction by, for example, overcoming finite thought; rather, he already presupposed
[this outcome], in his concept of reflection” (p. 226; emphasis added). In both of
these statements, and throughout his rich and penetrating book, Düsing overlooks
the way in which Hegel’s concept of reflection sums up the outcome of the argument
of the Doctrine of Being (which is an argument that Düsing does not examine, as
such). Christian Iber appears to lean toward a similar criticism of Hegel’s account
of the reflection-determinations when he describes Hegel’s transition from diversity to
“opposition” as depending upon a “specifically idealistic . . . presupposition” (Metaphysik
absoluter Relationalität [Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990], pp. 372–373), which Iber
apparently does not take Hegel to have supported by argument. Iber, like Düsing, does
178 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

.. The Reflection-Determinations: Difference

Difference in itself, Hegel writes, is “self-related” difference; thus it is
“the difference not from an other, but of itself from itself; it is not itself,
but its other” (WL 6:46–47/GW 11:266,20–23/417; emphasis added).
This is because essence is essence only insofar as it determines itself,
and thus becomes its “other” (using this Doctrine of Being term loosely,
here). Here, again, Hegel echoes his argument, in “Quality,” that finite
being can be itself only by going beyond its finitude, into something
that is (to that extent) its “other.” Hegel continues:
But what is different from difference is identity. So difference is itself and
identity. Both together constitute difference; [difference] is the whole
and its moment . . . as identity equally is its whole and its moment. – This
is to be regarded as the essential nature of reflection and as the determined
original ground of all activity [Tätigkeit] and self-movement.
(WL 6:47; GW 11:266,23–34/417)

“What is different from difference is identity” – that is, the concept

of identity can be constructed from that of difference, by applying differ-
ence to itself. (Just as, in “Quality,” the concept of the “something”
was constructed by applying negation to itself.) So difference is both
itself and identity: It is “the whole and its moment” in that it is “re-
flection as a whole” (as identity was originally introduced: WL 6:40/
GW 11:261,22/412), and also the subordinate “moment” of reflection
that was initially called “difference.” Identity, likewise, is its whole and
its moment, in that it is both “reflection as a whole,” which (as we saw in
4.9) emerged as absolute difference, and also a sort of common sense
“determination of identity” that is reestablished “against ” this absolute
difference, and is consequently a moment within reflection as a whole
(WL 6:41; GW 11:262,9–15/413).
Identity gave way to difference, and difference (reapplied to itself)
reconstitutes identity. Both of them exhibit the pattern of being both
“the whole” and “its moment.” What this pattern (that both difference
and identity are both the whole and its moment) means is that self-
specification or self-determination is the nature of reflection as such,
so that neither the “whole” nor identity/difference as its “moment” is
intelligible by itself; they are, in effect, indistinguishable. This pattern

not identify the way in which Hegel’s concept of reflection embodies an “idealism” for
which Hegel has, in fact, offered an explicit argument, in “Quality” (see 3.4–3.16) and
the rest of the Doctrine of Being.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 179

is the “determined original ground of all activity and self-movement”

insofar as activity and self-movement are manifestations of the pro-
cess of self-specification in which essence, as such, is engaged. Activity
and self-movement manifest this process insofar as they are manifesta-
tions of selfhood, which is what essence, reflection, and the reflection-
determinations (as the successors to negativity and true infinity) are
about. The process of self-specification or self-determination within
essence differs from the (in a broad sense) activity or self-movement
that were embodied in the something and in true infinity in that these
latter were developed from determinate or finite being – from the more
determinate – toward transcendence, whereas the development within
essence proceeds (as it were) from transcendence toward determinate
or finite being. But the relationship that’s being established in each case
is substantially the same; only the sequence of the argument differs.
Difference now has two “moments,” difference and identity, each of
which is “reflected into itself” – that is, posited as it is in itself (which
is what made each its own moment, as well as the whole). The situ-
ation that is composed of two such moments, Hegel calls “diversity”
(Verschiedenheit) (WL 6:47/GW 11:267,5–12/418). In diversity, the two
terms “are not overtly (an ihnen selbst) different, so the difference is ex-
ternal to them” (WL 6:48/GW 11:267,1–3/418; emphasis added). That
is, their difference doesn’t concern them, isn’t part of their identity,
but is purely external to them. “Identity falls apart overtly,” in this way,
“into diversity, because as absolute difference it posits itself in itself as
the negative of itself,” which is identity, and identity – understood as
indifference [Gleichgültigkeit] toward others – is the “foundation and el-
ement” of what is differentiated (WL 6:47/GW 11:267,14–22/418). If
difference “is not itself, but its other” (WL 6:47/GW 11:266,23/417), it
is an identity that, in itself, embodies no difference – and this is (sheer)
“diversity.” The relation between the resulting diverse items is the deter-
mining reflection that Hegel described as having “gotten outside itself”
(WL 6:34/GW 11:257,4–5/407) – a return (in effect) to the “external
reflection” that he discussed earlier (on both, see 4.8). Hegel’s discus-
sion of diversity and its successor, “opposition,” will retrace the path of
his earlier discussion of external reflection and its successor, determin-
ing reflection, in a way that will put this type of externality behind it.
Since “diversity” – in which entities are simply “external” to each
other – is evidently a close relative of (though not identical to) the
“atomism” that resulted from the downfall of true infinity, Hegel’s treat-
ment of diversity will clearly be an important part of his overall response
180 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

to atomism and egoism. Before we plunge into his discussion, it will be

useful, as I suggested at the end of 4.9, to remember that the “diversity”
that Hegel is discussing, here, is not just anything that one might pic-
ture under that title; rather, it is the diversity, specifically, of the moments
of “absolute difference,” which in turn is the latest embodiment of “re-
flection,” of “essence,” and (in general) of “negativity.” Thus, although
Hegel intends his discussion of diversity and its transition into oppo-
sition to serve as a critique of what we might call a “common sense”
ontology of “diverse” entities (since if “diversity” isn’t an adequate ac-
count of the relation between the moments of absolute difference, it
can’t very well be regarded as the basic relation between entities in gen-
eral), it should not be surprising if his critique is not enough, by itself,
to persuade advocates of “common sense” ontologies to follow Hegel by
substituting “opposition” for the diversity to which they are presently
wedded; for they may well not understand that diversity in the way that
Hegel, coming from the Doctrine of Being, understands it. To stand a
decent chance of persuading them, one would have to bring to bear the
whole argument of the Doctrine of Being (as well as the first two chap-
ters of “Essence”). As with many other such discussions in the Science of
Logic, this one must be taken not as a discussion of familiar concepts
taken simply at “face value,” but rather as a challenge to the defenders
of familiar concepts to formulate them in a way that would make them
both coherent, in themselves, and immune to the arguments of the
Science of Logic as a whole.

.. The Reflection-Determinations: From

Diversity to Opposition
Hegel’s first point about “diversity” is that in its world, “reflection” sur-
vives in two forms: as “reflection in itself” (Reflexion an sich) and as
“external reflection” (äußere Reflexion). “Reflection in itself” is a name
for identity “determined as indifferent [gleichgültig] toward difference,”
and thus as ignoring the interconnection of identity and difference
that was developed in Hegel’s initial discussion of identity; so it is
“reflection” only in a minimal, potential sense (“in itself”). “External
reflection” is the “determined difference” between the two moments of
absolute difference – this determining being understood (naturally) as
one “toward which the reflection in itself is indifferent” (WL 6:49/WL
11:268,27–39/419). Now Hegel announces that “reflection in itself”
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 181

or external identity is likeness [Gleichheit], and external reflection or

external difference is unlikeness [Ungleichheit]:

Likeness, it is true, is identity, but only as a positedness, an identity that is

not in and for itself. Similarly, unlikeness is difference, but as an external
difference that is not in and for itself the difference of the unlike itself.
Whether or not something is like something else does not concern either
the one or the other [geht weder das eine noch das andere an]; . . . identity or
nonidentity, as likeness or unlikeness, is from the point of view of a third
[ist die Rücksicht eines Dritten] that falls outside them.
(WL 6:49–50/GW 11:268,4–13/419–420)

Identity and difference that were “in and for themselves” were, of
course, the pure identity and absolute difference that we began with,
by comparison with which likeness and unlikeness are merely external.
The “point of view of a third” is an external reflection, a process of
“comparison” [Vergleichung], that relates the diverse items to likeness
and unlikeness. It “separates” likeness and unlikeness from each other
by relating them to one and the same substratum “by means of ‘inso-
fars,’ ‘sides,’ and ‘points of view’”; the diverse items are “on one side like
each other, but on the other side unlike, and insofar as they are like, to that
extent they are not unlike” (WL 6:50/GW 11:269,30–36/420). In this
way, the “point of view of a third” prevents likeness from directly contra-
dicting unlikeness, in the diverse items. This is probably all so familiar,
from our “common sense” ways of talking – from “the understanding” –
that it seems transparently obvious and uncontroversial. But Hegel says
that “this holding apart of likeness and unlikeness” is, in fact, “their
destruction,” because

through their mutual indifference, likeness is only related to itself, and

unlikeness equally is related to itself and is a point of view and a reflection
for itself; so each is like itself; the difference has vanished, since they have
no determinateness over against each other; in other words each, now, is
only likeness.
(WL 6:50–51/GW 11:269,4–16/420; emphasis added)

Hegel’s point is that if “likeness” and “unlikeness” are taken as mere

givens, with no determinateness “over against each other,” there is no ef-
fective way of distinguishing them from each other, and they are both,
in effect, mere “likeness” (to themselves). Pure identity and absolute
difference each yielded a determinate relationship between identity
and difference; diversity, so far, has not. How can such a relationship
182 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

be arrived at, starting from diversity? Hegel points out that such a rela-
tionship is implicit in their relationship to the “third,” the “comparer”
[das Vergleichende]: “The comparer goes from likeness to unlikeness, and
from unlikeness back to likeness, and therefore lets the one vanish in
the other” (as we just saw), “and is, in deed [in der Tat], the negative
unity of both” (WL 6:51/GW 11:269/421). This is not just a subjective
doing, Hegel insists: “This negative unity is in deed the nature of like-
ness and unlikeness themselves” (ibid.; emphasis added). The “deed”
of comparison is, in effect, an essential feature of the diverse items be-
ing compared, and of their likeness and unlikeness. Through it, they
receive the determinate relationship that may allow them not to simply
vanish in each other.
I have not found a commentary that takes this claim about the “deed”
of comparison with the seriousness with which Hegel seems to intend
it. It seems to me that Hegel’s move, here, is similar to his move, in
“Quality,” of introducing the “Ought,” and thus (by implication) ra-
tional action, as crucial to the process of transcending the finitude of
determinate being. His point there was that beings can be what they
are by virtue of themselves, only insofar as they can go beyond their
finitude; that beings that are capable of rational action (in accordance
with an “Ought”) are capable of going beyond their finitude, and thus
being what they are by virtue of themselves; and thus that a world that
contains the capacity for rational action is (to some extent) capable of
being what it is by virtue of itself, whereas a world that doesn’t contain
that capacity, is not. His point here seems to be, similarly, that the world
of “diverse” items is capable of determining those items, and likeness
and unlikeness, in relation to each other, insofar as it contains the ca-
pacity for engaging in comparison. That is, a world that is capable of
something like consciousness is determinate in a way that a world that
lacks that capacity is not. This may sound ridiculously anthropocen-
tric or consciousness-centric, but so (no doubt) would Hegel’s argu-
ment in “Quality,” before its logic is understood. Another parallel is
his critique of external reflection, in which he argued that although
“positing in advance” – positing items as entirely independent of the
process of positing – was initially a “superseding of [ordinary] positing”
(WL 6:29/GW 11:253,34/403), it nevertheless constituted a kind of
positing because it defended (as essence and positing are supposed to
do) the self-sufficiency, the non-“transitoriness” of these items, and thus
it was not “external” to the immediate; rather it was the “immanent
reflection of immediacy itself” (WL 6:30/GW 11:254,11/404). This
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 183

argument appealed, in effect, to the fundamental status of “negativity”

and essence, to argue that an activity (namely, “positing in advance”)
that could be interpreted as implementing negativity and essence, and
thus achieving the kind of reality that (according to the argument of the
Doctrine of Being) they represent, should be interpreted in that way, be-
cause the argument of the Doctrine of Being gives us reason to regard
negativity and essence as the fundamental reality. Hegel’s critique of
“diversity” seems to operate in the same way. It suggests a way in which
diversity could solve its internal problem of how to make likeness and
unlikeness determinate in relation to each other; the solution involves
the presence of an action or an activity (that of comparison); and Hegel
takes it to be reasonable to assume the presence of such an action or
activity, because (1) he has established the presence of negativity and
essence (as the reality that is what it is by virtue of itself); (2) negativity
and essence, as “internalization” and “positing,” have the character of
action or activity; and (3) it seems reasonable to take “comparison” as an
instance or implementation of internalization and positing, and thus of
negativity and essence. So that here again, as in the critique and super-
seding of external reflection, the determinate reality of the composite
that is composed of the diverse items together with likeness and unlike-
ness depends upon the presence, within it, of a certain kind of action or
activity, which is in fact present as the outcome of the argument of the
Doctrine of Being. Thus it seems, again, that Hegel’s “idealism,” in his
treatment of diversity, is not an external and “optional” commitment
that he happens to have made; rather, it’s both a necessary premise of
his argument and a premise that he has a right to, on the basis of the
argument that he has given (primarily) in the Doctrine of Being.18
Hegel’s next point is that although in one sense likeness and un-
likeness “vanished” into mere likeness (with themselves), there is also
a sense in which they vanish into unlikeness with themselves. This is be-
cause in the configuration that Hegel has described, likeness belongs
to the “third,” rather than to itself, so it is actually unlike itself; and

18 Christian Iber offers “considerations” that make Hegel’s transition from diversity to
opposition “understandable” without relying on Hegel’s own “specifically idealistic”
argument (Metaphysik absoluter Relationalität [Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990], p.
372), but these considerations don’t seem to be sufficient to make the transition com-
pelling, which is what Hegel needs it to be in order to carry out his program. I find it
difficult to assess the philosophical virtues of the “metaphysics of absolute relationality”
on which Iber thinks Hegel superimposed his (as Iber sees it) unfortunate and clearly
indefensible “idealism.”
184 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

unlikeness, for its part, belonging to the “third,” “is not the unlikeness
of itself, but of something that is unlike it,” and thus it is actually like
rather than unlike (and thus it’s unlike itself). Thus,

the like and the unlike are unlike themselves. Consequently each is this
reflection: likeness, that it is itself and unlikeness, and unlikeness, that it
is itself and likeness.
(WL 6:51/WL 11:269–270,38–4/421)

Very much as it turned out that “identity is overtly absolute non-identity”

(WL 6:41/GW 11:262,8/413; see 4.9) and that “difference is itself and
identity” (WL 6:47/GW 11:266,23–24/417; see 4.10).19 Hegel’s point
is that like and unlike are each understandable only as the opposite of the
other. This is the determinateness “over against each other” that they
need, and that diversity, as such, could not give them.

.. From Opposition to Contradiction

Once like and unlike have this determinateness, they exhibit the rela-
tionship of “opposition” (Gegensatz), which is “the unity of identity and
diversity” (WL 6:55/GW 11:272,7/424), composed of “sides” that are
“indifferent” toward each other (as in diversity), but are “just as much sim-
ply moments of one negative unity” (WL 6:52/GW 11:270,23–24/421).
The archetype of “opposition” is the relationship of positive to negative,
in arithmetic and in general. But the thing to remember, once again, is
that opposition enters the picture as a way of making likeness and un-
likeness determinate in relation to each other, and they in turn entered
the picture as aspects of the relation between identity and difference,
which is the relation between essence and its determinateness. So the
ultimate point of “opposition,” within the Doctrine of Essence, is to con-
ceptualize the relation between essence and its determinateness. What
it says about them is that they stand to each other in the same relation
as positive stands to negative: The identity of each is the negation of
the other, so that while they each stand as separate entities (“indifferent
sides”), neither is thinkable without reference to the other.

19 Klaus J. Schmidt points out this and other connections, in his Georg W. F. Hegel,
Wissenschaft der Logik – Die Lehre vom Wesen: Ein einführender Kommentar (Paderborn:
Schöningh, 1997), p. 67.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 185

In the way that we have been describing, each side achieves “self-
standingness” (Selbständigkeit) through their opposition:

Each has its own indifferent self-standingness through the fact that it has
as an overt [an ihm] feature its relation to its other moment; thus it is the
whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with
itself by its other and contains it.
(WL 6:64–65/GW 11:279,27–31/431)

Side A is self-standing insofar as it contains within itself its other (side B)

and its relation to it. This makes it the “whole opposition.” In another
way, however, the self-standingness of each requires the non-being of the
other:

But it is also mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; thus it is a
unity for itself and excludes the other from itself.
(WL 6:65/GW 11:279,31–34/431)

Insofar as the sides are both “beings” (Sein) – which they are insofar
as they are “diverse” (see WL 6:55/GW 11:272,12–20/424) – side A’s
“other” is likewise a being, so that for side A to be self-standing, and rely
on nothing external (“external” because beings cannot be contained
within each other, in the manner of “reflection”), it must treat this
“other” being, side B, as a non-being, and exclude it from itself.

[Thus] the self-standing reflection-determination excludes the other

reflection-determination in the same respect in which it contains the other, so that
in its self-standingness it excludes its own self-standingness from itself.
For its own self-standingness consists in the fact that it contains within
itself the determination that is other than it (because only in this way can
it not be a relation to something external), but it consists no less immedi-
ately in the fact that it is itself and excludes from itself the determination
that is negative to it. Thus it is contradiction.
(WL 6:65/GW 11:279,35–7/431; emphasis added)

Side A both contains and excludes side B, in the same respect. It contains
side B so as not to be what it is by relation to something external to it;
and it excludes side B for the same reason: so as not to be what it is by
relation to something external to it. The containment is by virtue of the
structures of negativity, positing reflection, or determining reflection,
while the exclusion is by virtue of the structures of being, external reflec-
tion, or diversity. The conflict between these two threads, as exhibited
186 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

within “opposition,” Hegel baptizes as “contradiction.” A clear instance

of it can be seen, once again, in true infinity. Infinity contains the finite
insofar as it is the finite’s self-supersession, which it must be in order
not to be opposed to the finite and limited by it. (This is the “negativity”
dimension.) Taking the finite and the infinite as mere “beings,” on the
other hand (this is the dimension of being, external reflection, or diver-
sity), they must exclude one another (treat each other as non-beings).
Both features – being a being, and not being limited by opposition
to another – are required for the infinite to be “self-standing.” Thus,
containment of the finite and exclusion of the finite both apply to the
infinite “in the same respect” (containment by virtue, however, of the
structure of negativity, and exclusion by virtue of the structure of deter-
minate being). No doubt this is why Hegel says in one of his Remarks
on contradiction that the infinite “is contradiction as it shows itself in
the sphere of being” (WL 6: /GW 11:287,30/440).20
As one might expect, since the “contradiction” that Hegel is ana-
lyzing results from the unstable coexistence of two threads (the one
composed of negativity, positing reflection, and determining reflec-
tion, the other of being, external reflection, and diversity), it isn’t final;
rather, Hegel says, it “resolves itself” (WL 6:67/GW 11:280,30/433).
It does this in two ways. On the one hand, insofar as it is composed of
being, and so on, it resolves itself, through the “transition” or “ceaseless
vanishing” of the opposed terms into each other, into “zero” (die Null;
WL 6:67/GW 11:280,37/433). On the other hand, insofar as it is com-
posed of negativity and positing or determining reflection, its “result is
not only zero” (WL 6:67/GW 11:281,2/433), but rather, “its ground” or
basis or reason (seinen Grund [WL 6:68/GW 11:282,10/434]), which

20 Readers who seek a complete account of Hegel’s analysis of opposition and contradic-
tion should supplement what I offer, here, with Michael Wolff’s classic study, Der Begriff
des Widerspruchs. Eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants und Hegels (Königstein/Taunus: Hain,
1981), which examines Hegel’s account of opposition in much greater detail and gives
a highly original interpretation of how his account of contradiction emerges from it
(see especially pp. 146–155). I am not in a position to integrate Wolff’s results fully into
my discussion here, though I don’t think they conflict with mine. Although he places
“negativity” at the center of his analysis, as I do, Wolff’s focus on Hegel’s discussion of
opposition and contradiction as such prevents him from discussing the role that nega-
tivity plays in Hegel’s argument from Dasein (“determinate being”) to the “something”
and true infinity, and in the transition from the Doctrine of Being to the Doctrine of
Essence, with the result that Wolff’s book doesn’t address negativity’s role in the argu-
ment of the Logic as a whole, and its relation to the ontological questions on which my
interpretation focusses. For additional detailed textual commentary, see also Christian
Iber’s Metaphysik absoluter Relationalität (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990).
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 187

is “essence as unity of the positive and the negative”: “positive identity

with itself, but which at the same time relates itself to itself as negativity”
(WL 6:69/GW 11:282,5–26/435). In the “ground,” each of the self-
standing opposed terms perishes (geht zugrunde), but in doing so they
also “come together with themselves” (ibid.) as “the ground, which con-
tains and supports its determinations” (WL 6:79/GW 11:289,34/442).
When Hegel says that contradiction “resolves itself” into something
that is not a contradiction, he may seem to agree with the usual view that
the presence of contradiction is a sign of falsehood or unreality. That
view would, however, be more consistent with contradiction’s resulting
in “zero,” in nothing, than with the other aspect of Hegel’s account,
according to which contradiction’s result is “not only zero,” but some-
thing called the “ground,” which we can expect (following the usual
pattern in the Logic) to be more concrete and more real than what
preceded it. If contradiction resolves itself not only into zero, but also
into something that is concrete and real, then contradiction itself is
not simply equivalent to zero or falsehood or unreality. This is why
Hegel famously says, in his third Remark on contradiction and related
issues, that “all things are in themselves contradictory,” and that conven-
tional thinking is mistaken when it says that “there is nothing contradic-
tory” and that contradiction is not “something present”: ein Vorhandenes
(WL 6:74–75/GW 11:286–287/439–440). Just as being and the finite
have not merely been swept aside, in the progress of the Logic, but
rather have found their proper place as “ideal” moments within some-
thing that is more real than themselves (namely, true infinity and its
successors), so also contradiction is not merely swept aside, but finds
its proper place as an ideal moment within the “ground” and its suc-
cessors. It is “present” in the same way that finite things are present:
not as an ultimate reality, but as a necessary aspect or moment of the
ultimate reality. To say that “all things are in themselves contradictory”
is not to say that the ultimate reality itself is contradictory, but it is to
say that “contradiction,” as Hegel has analyzed it, is a necessary aspect
or moment of the ultimate reality. The point of true infinity was that an
“infinity” that is simply opposed to the finite, is not truly infinite; and
Hegel takes it as established that in any similar process of overcoming
or “resolution,” such as the resolution of contradiction into the ground,
the resolution can’t simply be opposed to what it resolves (on pain of
being determined by what it opposes, rather than by itself), but must
rather include what it resolves, as a moment within it. True infinity in-
cludes the finite, by being the finite’s self-supersession, and the ground
188 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

includes contradiction in precisely the same way: by being contradic-

tion’s “self-resolution.” So contradiction, like the finite, has a certain
reality – not the “reality” simpliciter that Absolute Spirit will have, but
not mere unreality, either; rather, the special kind of reality that Hegel
calls “ideality” (which I explained in 3.16).
Clark Butler writes that “contradictory things ‘exist’ not literally in
that one entity has contradictory properties, but in that the assumption
that it has contradictory properties may become a mental or institu-
tional fixation,” which is what he thinks Hegel is driving at with his state-
ment that “all things are in themselves contradictory.”21 Here, Butler
seems to neglect the way in which later stages in a dialectical develop-
ment or supersession don’t leave what preceded them behind them,
but rather incorporate it, and thus lend it a (derivative) reality. This
is indispensable for understanding why Hegel thinks he needs to crit-
icize the traditional understanding of the Law of Non-Contradiction.
As traditionally understood, that “law” denies that the contradictory
has any reality at all, whereas Hegel wants to maintain that the reality
of Absolute Spirit, and of everything that precedes it in his system, is
not intelligible except as the self-supersession of what precedes them,
in each case, and thus it lends a certain important, though derivative,
reality – the reality that Hegel calls “ideality” – to what precedes them.
That’s the sense in which the contradictory is real, at the same time that
(as Hegel says) it “resolves itself.” Understanding this feature of Hegel’s
thinking makes it possible to accept his thinking with significantly less
“corrective reconstruction” than Butler feels compelled to engage in.22
My interpretation of Hegelian “contradiction” as resulting from the
unstable co-existence of two threads – one composed of negativity, posit-
ing reflection, and determining reflection, and the other composed of
being, external reflection, and diversity – also makes sense of Hegel’s
well-known statement, in his third Remark on contradiction, that while
identity, in contrast to contradiction,
is only the determination of the one-fold immediate, of dead being
[, contradiction] on the other hand is the root of all motion and vitality;

21 Clark Butler, Hegel’s Logic. Between Dialectic and History (Evanston: Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1996), p. 56.
22 Butler describes his project in this way on p. 23 of Hegel’s Logic. Between Dialectic and
History. To my defense of Hegel’s position on the reality of contradiction, Butler could,
of course, reply that Hegel’s conception of “ideality” also needs to be “correctively
reconstructed”; but he shows no sign, in his discussion of Hegel’s “Quality” chapter, of
seeing a problem there that would require this sort of treatment.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 189

it is only insofar as something has a contradiction within it that it moves,

has a drive [Trieb] and activity [Tätigkeit].
(WL 6:75/GW 11:286,9–13/439)

The motor of the Logic as a whole is the interaction between the two
threads, in which being, external reflection, diversity, and their suc-
cessors represent (so to speak) “common sense” or what Hegel calls
“the understanding” (Verstand), and negativity, positing reflection, de-
termining reflection, and their successors represent selfhood. Insofar
as the Logic clarifies this interaction and makes it plausible, it also
persuades us to interpret physical motion and life in these terms, as ex-
hibiting the emergence of selfhood; and when we do that, we interpret
the prior phase, in each case (whether it is determinate being, spurious
infinity, external reflection, or diversity) as embodying a contradiction
that is resolved in the subsequent phase, in which selfhood is vindi-
cated. And consequently (as we will see in more detail in connection
with Objectivity, the Idea, Life, and Nature), motion, “drive,” life, and
activity all present themselves as resolving contradictions.
One final feature of of Hegel’s account of contradiction that my
interpretation clarifies is his somewhat notorious objection to the dis-
tinction between “contrary” and “contradictory” concepts. In a retro-
spective passage in the Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel writes of the
“inner nullity” of the distinction that is commonly drawn between con-
trary and contradictory concepts, “as though what is contrary must not
equally be determined as contradictory,” as he thinks he has shown, in
the passages that we are studying here, that it must be (WL 6:292/GW
12:46,2–4/615). From the point of view of conventional logic, Hegel’s
claim seems very strange. Why should contrary concepts – those that
are opposed to each other by being opposite extremes – also necessar-
ily be contradictory – that is, opposed to each other in such a way that
anything that’s not described by one must be described by the other?
What about the simply indifferent cases that are, say, neither black nor
white? This is where it is vital to remember what Hegel’s topic is, in
the Logic and, in particular, in the Doctrine of Essence. His topic in
the Logic is being or reality and his topic in the Doctrine of Essence
is “negativity,” as a specific conception of being or reality. That is, he
is discussing everyday discourse, or everyday conceptions of “reality,”
only insofar as they claim to employ systematically defensible concep-
tions of reality as such. He thinks he has demonstrated, in the chap-
ter on “Quality,” that the ordinary conceptions of quality, reality, or
190 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

finitude are not systematically defensible, by themselves, but can only

be properly employed within a context of negativity or true infinity. He
has now shown, through his analysis of “diversity” and opposition, that
within such a context of negativity or true infinity, the reality that is
described by apparently merely “contrary” concepts will turn out to be
better described, at a fundamental level, by contradictory concepts. The
fundamental reality will be contradictory, rather than merely contrary.
It’s not that nothing will be neither black nor white, but rather that
qualities such as black, white, and colorless are less real (less able to
be what they are by virtue of themselves) than self-transcending fini-
tude (true infinity) is, and that this self-transcending finitude embod-
ies contradiction. So the more real, the more contradictory. This is a
remarkable claim, but it is not as weird as it seems when it is taken
out of context; it is backed up by the detailed argument that I have
laid out.

.. From Reflection to Actuality

Having analyzed in considerable detail the first two chapters of the
Doctrine of Essence, I will now sketch the next five chapters, so as to be
able to give detailed attention, after that, to the final two chapters on
“Actuality” – including necessity, substance, and causality – which are
crucial for Hegel’s overall account of freedom.
Insofar as the positive and negative, the “contradiction,” has super-
seded itself or resolved itself, essence’s attempt at determining itself
through the “reflection-determinations” of identity, difference, oppo-
sition, and so on, has failed. So the “ground” into which contradic-
tion resolves itself is a reflection-determination that is determinate
only as “superseded determination” (WL 6:80/GW 11:291,10/444).
“Reflection,” Hegel says, “is pure mediation as such, while the ground
is essence’s real mediation with itself” (WL 6:81/GW 11:292,1–2/445):
“real” because it is “being that is reestablished by essence: reflection’s
non-being, through which essence mediates itself” (WL 6:82/GW
11:292,19–20/445). As in external reflection and diversity, then, the
ground is another attempt by essence to deal with itself by going
outside itself, only in this case it does so by going outside “reflec-
tion” itself, to being. It does this through a series of conceptions of
“ground,” exhibiting increasing “externality,” which culminate in “ex-
istence” (Existenz), in which the “heart of the matter” (die Sache selbst),
the “truly unconditioned” (WL 6:118/GW 11:318,35/474), is “thrown
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 191

out into the externality of being” (WL 6:119/GW 11:319,11/475; emphasis

added).23
This immediacy, or “essential being” (WL 6:124/GW 11:323,13/479),
the form that being takes in the context of essence, Hegel calls “ex-
istence” or “appearance” (Erscheinung). Existence is epitomized in the
“thing” (das Ding), whose contradictory (WL 6:143/GW 11:337,12–14/
495) “properties” or “matters” lead to its replacement by appearance,
which is “not . . . immediate, but reflected existence” (WL 6:148/GW
11:341,13/499). This “reflection” takes the forms (first) of the contrast
between appearance and the “in-itself,”24 and then – as the “essential

23 Hegel also says that essence “releases” an immediacy (ibid.), or being. The phrase,
“thrown out [hinausgeworfen] into the externality of being,” inevitably reminds us of
Martin Heidegger’s notion of the “thrownness” (Geworfenheit) of Dasein’s Being (Being
and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson [New York and Evanston:
Harper and Row, 1962], p. 174; 7th German edition, p. 135). I don’t know whether
Hegel and Heidegger came up with this metaphor independently, or Heidegger derived
it from Hegel (he doesn’t give Hegel credit for it, in Being and Time), or they shared
some third, independent source. Insofar as “Dasein,” for Heidegger, refers to human
being, in particular, Hegel’s account of “existence” as “thrown out” seems to have a
broader application than Heidegger’s account of “thrownness” has. But as we know, the
“negativity” and “essence” of which “existence” is the latest formulation are intimately
connected to selfhood and freedom, and in that way to human beings, so the distance
between Heidegger and Hegel on this point perhaps boils down to the fact that Hegel
constructs a more explicit systematic relationship between being and (human) freedom
than Heidegger does (namely, the systematic relationship that Heidegger condemns as
“ontotheology”).
24 Since the “thing in itself ” emerges, from this argument, as an aspect of “reflected
existence,” it “is reflected into itself and is in itself, only insofar as it is external” (WL
6:/GW 11:331,37/488; emphasis added). Hegel points out that Kant’s transcendental
idealism fails to grasp this feature of the “in itself,” but instead “holds fast to the abstract
thing-in-itself as an ultimate determination, and opposes to the thing-in-itself reflection
or the determination and manifoldness of the properties; whereas in deed [in der Tat]
the thing-in-itself essentially has this external reflection as an overt feature [an ihm selbst] and
determines itself as a thing with its own determinations [or] properties [Eigenschaften]”
(WL 6:136/GW 11:332,27–34/490; emphases altered). Rather than being “abstract”
and “ultimate,” the thing in itself is merely abstracted from “existence,” and must be
understood in that context. “Essence,” the “inner” that we might have thought of as
equivalent to the “thing in itself ” and thus lending “ultimateness” to the thing in itself,
doesn’t function in that way here, precisely because essence at this point has gone over
completely into the immediacy of “existence” (see WL 6:128/GW 11:326,7–16/483).
Hegel’s account of the “in itself,” here, corresponds well to his account of freedom in
connection with true infinity, since in both cases the “in itself ” or the locus of freedom
as such is integrated into a totality – in one case, true infinity, and in the other case,
existence – of which freedom (going beyond the finite, or “in-itself ”-ness) is a recog-
nized aspect, rather than being a polar opposite of something that is equally valid and
that appears to undermine it, as in the Kantian account of freedom. Of course, the “in
itself ” is a mere shred or anticipation of freedom itself, which will reemerge as such only
192 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

relation” – of the whole and its parts, force and its expression, and in-
ner and outer. The resolution of these is “actuality” (Wirklichkeit), which
Hegel describes as “the unity of essence and existence” or of “the inner and
the outer” (WL 6:186/GW 11:369,4–22/529; emphasis added). Since
we are still in the Doctrine of Essence, all of these concepts must still
be understood as attempts at defining the relation between essence, or
negativity, and its determinateness (or, put another way, between God
and the world). In “existence,” this agenda was temporarily suspended,
as it was earlier in external reflection and diversity, but as in those cases,
reflection or negativity again enters the picture with “appearance,” and
it is further developed through the “essential relation” and actuality,
where essence or negativity or the inner is fully present, in unity with
existence or the outer.

.. From Actuality to Absolute Necessity

The first form of “actuality” is the “absolute” as such. The absolute’s
content is that it “manifests itself . . . not as the expression of something
inner, nor over against an other, but it is only as the absolute manifesta-
tion of itself for itself” (WL 6:194–195/GW 11:375/536; emphasis added).
Such a manifestation requires a unity of existence or immediacy, on the
one hand, and being-in-itself, ground, or reflectedness, on the other
hand. This unity is actuality in the narrower sense (WL 6:201/GW
11:380,22–24/541–542). Because what is actual must be possible, the
form that this actuality in the narrower sense initially takes is contin-
gency (Zufälligkeit, “accidentalness”). The contingent is what is actual,
but could just as well be merely possible (it is the “unity of possibility
and actuality” [WL 6:205/GW 11:383,9/545]). As purely contingent
(zufällig, “accidental”), it has no “ground,” there is no reason for its ac-
tuality. (This is because contingency is an immediate unity of immediacy
and ground – which has the result that the ground or the essence is, as
Hegel says elsewhere, “submerged” in the immediacy [WL 6:120/GW
11:320,36/475].25 ) On the other hand, as purely contingent, it is not

at the end of the Doctrine of Essence, with the the emergence of subjectivity. But it is
important that this shred or anticipation have the right sort of relation to what differs
from it – as it does, in the account of existence.
25 See Klaus J. Schmidt, Georg W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik – Die Lehre vom Wesen:
Ein einführender Kommentar (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997), pp. 194–195 on this. I have
found Schmidt helpful at a number of points in my interpretation of Hegel’s account
of modality.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 193

something whose actuality is determined by itself (as “in and for itself”),
and thus there is something else, some other ground, that explains its
actuality. Thus it both has no ground and has a ground (WL 6:206/GW
11:384,19–36/545).
But this random conversion (Umschlagen) of contingency back and
forth between groundlessness and groundedness is a unity – it’s the same
thing that is being converted back and forth. In that way, contingency
is not merely possible, it is necessary. The identical thing that is either
grounded or groundless or both, is, in a way that is not merely contin-
gent, and that Hegel therefore dubs “necessity” (WL 6:206–207/GW
11:384–385,15–38/545–546). Hegel describes the emergence of this
identical thing that is shared by both sides of the conversion back and
forth, as a “going together with itself” (mit sich selbst zusammen gehen;
WL 6:206/GW 11:384,16–17/545; see the final paragraph of 4.8).
The point is that whether the thing is grounded or groundless, it is
inevitable – there is no way to talk about anything, without talking about
this thing. So in that sense it is necessary.26
This necessity is, initially, a “relative” necessity, corresponding to
what Hegel calls a “real actuality” (reale Wirklichkeit), one that has all the
manifoldness of “the thing with many properties, the existing world”
(WL 6:208/GW 11:385,19/546). In contrast to the previous, “formal
actuality,” real actuality has “content.” Associated with this real actuality
is “real possibility” – a kind of possibility that goes beyond the mere
absence of contradiction (the absence that constituted “formal possi-
bility”), by taking all the “determinations, circumstances, and conditions”
into account (WL 6:208/GW 11:386,3/547; emphasis added). We are
likely to think of possibility, including this “real possibility,” as contrasted
to actuality (including “real actuality”). However, Hegel argues that they
amount to the same thing. Real actuality, he points out, appeared ini-
tially to be immediate but became “reflected” because it had to be possi-
ble. And possibility, on the other hand, had to take the “determinations,

26 In Dieter Henrich’s classic essay, “Hegels Theorie über den Zufall” (in his Hegel im
Kontext [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971]: 157–186), which helpfully emphasizes
the importance of sheer contingency in Hegel’s Logic and his system as a whole (in
contrast to interpretations that make it sound as though Hegel’s emphasis on necessity
ultimately eliminates contingency), Henrich does not analyze the arguments by which
Hegel shows the supersession of contingency by real possibility and real actuality, and
of the latter by absolute necessity, and thus he leaves us in the dark about how Hegel
understands the relationship between contingency and necessity. (His discussion at the
top of p. 163 is very brief and, I think, misleading as it stands.)
194 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

circumstances, and conditions” into account in order to be the possi-

bility of something actual (WL 6:210/GW 11:387,24–31/548). So when
they are properly understood, actuality involves possibility and possibil-
ity involves actuality. Thus, here again, as in the case of contingency,
there is something that unifies the domain that’s in question – there is
a “going together with itself” (WL 6:210/GW 11:387,35–36/548). This
time, Hegel’s name for the result of the process is “real necessity.” “Real
possibility and necessity are . . . only apparently different,” he says, be-
cause “what is really possible can no longer be otherwise; under these
conditions and circumstances, nothing else can result” (WL 6:211/
GW 11:388,23–26/549).
Real necessity is not yet “absolute” necessity, because it is still relative:
It takes something contingent – namely, the “determinations, circum-
stances, and conditions” that determine real possibility – as its point of
departure (WL 6:211/GW 11:388,32–34/549). To argue for absolute
necessity, Hegel points out that the real necessity that is constituted by
actuality and possibility when they are converted back and forth in the
way that I described in the previous paragraph, amounts, in fact, to an
actuality, but one that by positing those moments (actuality and pos-
sibility) negatively, “posits itself in advance (or posits itself) as something
superseded, or as immediacy” (WL 6:214/GW 11:390,34–8/551). The new
actuality posits the previous actuality and possibility negatively insofar as
it contrasts them with itself. Positing the previous actuality and possibil-
ity in that way amounts to positing itself “as something superseded or as
immediacy” because it exists only as their unity. The previous actuality
and possibility are each superseded in the other. (What I said in the pre-
vious paragraph implies both of these statements, which Hegel makes
in the two sentences prior to the one from which the quotation was
taken.) And the previous actuality and possibility constitute an immedi-
ate determinateness because their determinateness is simply given or
contingent (via the “determinations, circumstances, and conditions”),
and because the new actuality supersedes them.
But since the new actuality emerges, in the way that I just described,
from the actuality that was real possibility, it comes into existence “from
the negation of itself” (WL 6:214/GW 11:390,9–13/551). Since it is me-
diated by its negation, it is determined as possibility (that which can be
or not be). In this mediation, both its possibility (or its “being-in-itself”)
and its immediacy are “positedness,” in the same way (WL 6:214/GW 11:
390,13–17/551). They are both posited because the new actuality takes
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 195

both of them as realizing itself; that is, it posits them. But if we take
immediacy as a kind of actuality, the unity of possibility and immedi-
acy/actuality (their both being posited in the same way) is contingency.
So real necessity itself determines itself (via this new actuality) as contingency.
And by removing real necessity’s dependence on a contingency that is external
to it – the dependence that made real necessity “real” – this new de-
velopment turns real necessity into “absolute necessity” (WL 6:214/GW
11:390,21–28/551). What real necessity had “posited in advance” is now
“its own positing” (WL 6:214/GW 11:390,33–34/551) – that is, a posit-
ing carried out by what will now be called absolute necessity. The con-
version back and forth of actuality and real possibility in real necessity,
when it is understood as involving what amounts to its own partial, in-
ternal contingency, and thus as eliminating the need for an outside
contingency, has allowed necessity to escape from its dependence on
an outside contingency, and thus to become absolute necessity.27
Hegel now describes absolute necessity as “just as much simple im-
mediacy or pure being as simple reflection-into-itself or pure essence”
(WL 6:215/GW 11:391,8–10/552), and insofar as it is pure being, its
“differences” take the form of “self-standing others, over against each
other,” at the same time that, insofar as it is essence, they are “absolute
identity” (ibid.). Insofar as (1) necessity is pure being, these “differ-
ences,” which (please note this well) are “determined as actuality
and possibility,” do not “shine into” each other, and neither of them
wants to show any trace of a relation to the other (WL 6:216/
GW 11:391,34–36/552). As mere “others,” in relation to each other,
actuality and possibility blindly “go under in otherness” (they are
blinder Untergang im Anderssein [WL 6:217/GW 11:392,33/553]); that
is, they meet the fate of qualities, which are nothing in themselves,
but defined solely by their relation to others. But when, on the
other hand, (2) necessity is seen as essence, this transition or going un-
der of the one into the other becomes a “going together with itself”
or “absolute identity”: The “others” (actuality and possibility) are
seen as aspects of a single process of reflection, or internal positing,
carried out by essence in the form of absolute necessity (WL 6:217/

27 This analysis of Hegel’s argument is meant to fill the gap that inclined W. T. Stace to
substitute his own analysis of the “fundamentals of idealism” for Hegel’s actual argument
(The Philosophy of Hegel. A Systematic Exposition [New York: Dover, 1955], p. 215), whose
validity he doubted (p. 213).
196 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

GW 11:392,38–1/553). By thus elegantly applying his standing contrast

between being and essence to the modalities and their mutual relations,
Hegel confirms that absolute necessity supersedes the whole range of
modalities.28
Absolute necessity is clearly a major landmark in the development
of Essence, and in the Logic as a whole. It corresponds, within Essence,
to true infinity, in Being, in that both of them involve the transcen-
dence of ordinary (finite, contingent) reality by something that Hegel
has argued is, in fact, more real. In the present case, where Hegel is
using the word “real” in connection with contingency, his actual term
for the result of the development would probably be “more concrete,”
rather than literally “more real,” but the upshot of the argument is the
same: that one cannot be fully aware of the problems in the use of the
ordinary concepts without seeing a need to go beyond them in the ways
that Hegel describes. Like true infinity, absolute necessity is more self-
sufficient than the ordinary concepts that it goes beyond: True infinity
no longer depended on its relation to “others” to determine its quality,
and absolute necessity, which generates its own, internal contingency,
no longer depends on its relation to contingently given “determina-
tions, circumstances, and conditions” to give it determinateness. The
difference between the two concepts, of course, is that absolute neces-
sity embodies the overcoming of the “collapse” of true infinity, and the
conceptual developments that followed that collapse, so that absolute
necessity should be immune to problems that true infinity, by itself,
could not deal with.

28 Klaus Schmidt interprets the “differences” that Hegel discusses in this passage as ex-
hibiting an “exaggerated individuation,” which absolute necessity overcomes by a use
of “force” (Gewalt) (Georg W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik – Die Lehre vom Wesen: Ein
einführender Kommentar [Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997], p. 208). Hegel does indeed dra-
matize these differences by referring to them as “free actualities” and calling necessity
“blind,” in relation to them (WL 6:216/GW 11:391,31–34/552); but he does not use
the word “force,” or anything equivalent to it, in this passage, and he does say that the
differences “are determined as actuality and possibility” (ibid.), and it seems clear from
this and from the general context that the only thing that is being “individuated” here
is possibility and actuality, and Hegel’s point is simply that they appear to be indepen-
dent of one another, but are in fact “posited in advance” by and thus subsumed within
absolute necessity (WL 6:217/GW 11:392,2/553). Hegel describes necessity as “blind,”
here, only insofar as it is viewed through categories of being, rather than categories of
essence. In a reading that resembles Schmidt’s, André Doz takes the passage to refer
to “beings” in general (“chaque étant”) and to picture absolute necessity as “violent” and
exhibiting an unresolved “excess of immediateness” (La Logique de Hegel et les Problèmes
traditionnels de l’Ontologie [Paris: Vrin, 1987], p. 157).
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 197

.. The Actual and the Rational

By showing that in specifying itself as actuality and ultimately as
“absolute necessity,” essence or possibility must posit itself as contingency,
Hegel’s argument to absolute necessity is a contribution to theodicy –
justifying God’s ways with finite creatures such as ourselves. It argues, in
effect, that in order to be actual, freedom (selfhood, negativity, essence)
must take the form of a realm of contingency (accident). So we should
not think that God’s “failure” to prevent evil and natural catastrophes
demonstrates God’s lack of interest in us. As St. Augustine argued in
De libero arbitrio, God permits evil because God wants us to be free, and
freedom is the greatest gift (the gift, as Kant and Hegel say, of the op-
portunity to be oneself). To this, Hegel adds that God permits natural
catastrophes because without contingency, as such, there would be no
freedom as actuality. In this way, the presence of sheer contingency is,
in fact, an essential feature of absolute necessity.
The topics of actuality and justifying God naturally bring to mind
Hegel’s famous (or infamous) dictum, in the Preface to the Philosophy
of Right, that “what is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational”
(7:24/20). In the light of his discussion of true infinity, where the truly
real turns out to be infinite and free, and in the light of his argument
from contingency to absolute necessity, it is clear that Hegel will not
interpret actuality as mere factual existence. Actuality is the “unity of
essence and existence” (WL 6:186/GW 11:369,3–4/529). The argument
that we have just been looking at leads to the conclusion that this unity,
when it is properly understood as absolute necessity, must include sheer
contingency, as one of its aspects. And this contingency presumably does
not qualify as “rational,” in itself; it is rational only insofar as absolute
necessity itself, which requires such contingency to be one of its aspects,
is rational. Looking at that absolute necessity, then, we ask in what sense
is it “rational”? Hegel said in a lecture that as the unity of the inner and
the outer, actuality is not opposed to rationality but rather is thoroughly
rational (EL §142A, middle). In such a unity, I take it, the essence or
ground of existence (the “inner”) is fully present; that is, the actual is
fully reflected or fully explicable. However, someone who has doubts
about whether everything that is actual is rational might have doubts
about identifying what is rational – in a strong sense of that word – with
whatever’s essence or ground is fully present. And Hegel himself in
fact normally means more by “rational” (vernünftig) than just having its
essence or ground fully present, as I will now show.
198 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“The proper philosophical significance of ‘reason,’” Hegel says

in introducing the “Idea,” in the Encyclopedia Logic, is “the subject-
object . . . the unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and the in-
finite,” etc. (EL §214; cf. WL 6:462–463/GW 12:173,11–35/755, and
PhG 3:177/138). Hegel identifies this unity with the Idea, the realized
Concept. It follows from this definition of “reason” that actuality, which
is not yet the subject or the Concept, still less the subject-object or the
Idea, is not yet reason. (Nor is absolute necessity yet reason.) It is true that
in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel describes actuality
as “the reason that is” (die seiende Vernunft [EL §6]), but his analysis of
actuality in the actual text of both Logics does not identify it with rea-
son or rationality, as such. He arrives at those concepts only later.29 So
I think that in identifying the actual with the rational, in the Preface to
the Philosophy of Right and in his lectures, Hegel must have been using
“actuality” in a short-hand way, as containing, by implication, the later
developments of the Concept and the Idea.30 The fact that Hegel didn’t
explain his short-hand, in this way, gives even more excuse to the critics
of his doctrine on this point, who could in fact have turned to the Logic

29 In his generally very helpful discussion of Hegel’s doctrine that the rational is actual and
the actual is rational, Michael Hardimon writes that “the essence of things . . . consists,
roughly speaking, in their inner or underlying rational structure,” and that Hegel uses
the word “rational” to mean “both rationally intelligible and reasonable or good,” so
that actuality, as the unity of essence and existence, will involve goodness, as an aspect
of essence (Michael O. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy. The Project of Reconciliation
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994], p. 53). I agree that Hegel understands
“essence” as involving a kind of rational intelligibility, but I don’t believe that Hegel in-
troduces a sort of rationality that explicitly involves goodness until he reaches the Doctrine
of the Concept. His account of “essence” doesn’t involve anything obviously evaluative,
and “the good” is a feature only of the Idea. No doubt if we interpret “essence” in the
influential way in which Aristotle interprets it, it has fairly immediate evaluative implica-
tions. (Allen Wood interprets Hegel’s conception of the relation between the actual and
the rational as “a rather Aristotelian variety of ethical naturalism” [Hegel’s Ethical Thought,
p. 12].) But Hegel divides his Aristotelian ideas between the Doctrine of Essence and
the Doctrine of the Concept, and the evaluative aspect enters, explicitly, only in the
Doctrine of the Concept. (I am referring only to Hegel’s actual analytical text; his lec-
ture comments and his EL Introduction are, as I have mentioned, looser.) I agree, of
course, that Hegel thinks that the evaluative aspect is implicit in actuality and thus in
the Doctrine of Essence, but he shouldn’t blame his critics (as he does in EL §6R) for
overlooking something that is only implicit in the immediately relevant portion of his
text.
30 In his introductory remarks on the Idea, Hegel says that “what anything actual is sup-
posed in truth to be, if its Concept is not in it and if its objectivity does not correspond to its
Concept at all, it is impossible to say, for it would be nothing” (WL 6: 464/756; emphasis
altered). But the references to “truth” and the “Concept,” here, precisely presuppose
a lot of discussion that is subsequent to the introduction of actuality, as such.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 199

(from the PR Preface) and not found this point clarified in the portion
of the text – namely, the analysis of actuality – to which Hegel’s formula
would seem to direct them.
This error on Hegel’s part is hardly a fatal one; it simply reflects a
carelessness in his use, in “popularizing” contexts, of his own categories.
The fact that he was able to commit such an error probably reflects the
relative isolation in which he was unfortunately working, in his eminent
professorship in Berlin. The fact that the error seems not to have been
clarified in the subsequent literature is no doubt due to the absence of
a clear understanding of his Logic, among interpreters of the Philosophy
of Right. In the paragraph following his dictum, in the Preface to the PR,
Hegel does in fact state that for philosophy, “nothing is actual except the
Idea,” and that “the rational . . . is synonymous with the Idea” (7:25/20;
emphasis added), which suggests that our attention should really be
directed to the Idea, as the reality behind the “actual,” rather than to
the actual as such. Few commentaries on the “actual/rational” dictum
have explored what lies behind this suggestion.31 We will explore this
in the remainder of this chapter, and especially in the next chapter.

.. Substance and Causality

For the absolute necessity that he has been analyzing, Hegel now in-
troduces the term, “absolute relation,” of which the first, “immediate”
instantiation is substance and its accidents. This new category is a
“relation” because it relates actuality to possibility: It is an interpre-
tation of the “difference” within absolute necessity that we were dis-
cussing in the penultimate paragraph of 4.14. Indeed, substance is a
“relation to itself,” because absolute necessity, understood from the point
of view of essence, is “being, solely as reflection” (WL 6:217–218/GW

31 Michael Hardimon gives a brief sketch of the “Idea,” in connection with Hegel’s “ac-
tual/rational” dictum (Hegel’s Social Philosophy. The Project of Reconciliation [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994], pp. 57–58), but he doesn’t explore the argument
connecting, or the differences between, Actuality and the Idea. Some of the most in-
fluential critics of Hegel’s dictum about the actual and the rational are Rudolf Haym,
Hegel und seine Zeit (Berlin: Gaertner, 1857), John Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics
(New York: Holt, 1915), and Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London:
Routledge, 1945), vol. 2, “The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the After-
math.” See also Ernst Tugendhat, Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, translated by
Paul Stern (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), pp. 311–321. The dictum is defended by
Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, pp. 10–14, and Michael Hardimon, Hegel’s Social
Philosophy. The Project of Reconciliation, pp. 52–83.
200 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

11:392–393,7–16/553–554; emphasis altered). The “sides” of the ab-

solute relation – that is, actuality and possibility – are each “totalities”
in the sense that they each constitute the whole of the relation, in-
cluding their opposite (WL 6:218/GW 11:393,1–4/554; cf. WL 6:188/
GW 11:371,21–23/531). To see how this can be the case, we could look
back to Hegel’s argument from contingency to absolute necessity (in
which possibility and actuality, and real possibility and real actuality,
were converted into each other, and were all ultimately superseded by
absolute necessity); but Hegel proposes now to give alternative, more
concrete formulations of the same relationship.
As I said, the first formulation is in terms of substance and acci-
dents. Substance corresponds, in effect, to possibility or essence, and
its accidents correspond to actuality, shine, or positedness. In the latter
respect, as the flux (Wechsel) of accidents, it is creative and destructive
power (Macht). This power belongs, of course, only to substance itself,
and not to any accident as such. Hegel points out, however, that the
substance/accident “relation” puts all of its emphasis on the identity of
substance with its accidents, and none on their difference. To be real
power for-itself, by bringing about something really different from it-
self, substance needs to move to the second formulation of the absolute
relation: causation.
In causation, substantiality is divided into something that is only
posited: the effect [Wirkung], and substance that is for-itself: the cause
[Ursache]. The effect corresponds to the accidents, and the cause to
the substance, but the cause’s power is now manifest because cause
and effect have separate, differentiated identities. At least, that’s what
they are meant to have; initially, their identities don’t succeed in being
separate, inasmuch as substance has actuality, as cause, only in (bring-
ing about) its effect (WL 6:224/GW 11:397,21–22/559), and the effect
contains nothing that wasn’t contained in the cause. Seen in this way, the
“power” of the substance or cause, as such, is not manifest (WL 6:225/
GW 11:398,28/559). Nor does this cause/effect relationship exhibit
necessity, since its content is contingent, arbitrarily given (WL 6:225/
GW 11:398,32; 399,7/560) from some external source. It is a finite
causality, whose content and form are separate from and indifferent
toward each other (WL 6:229/GW 11:401,7/563). Its content is, in ef-
fect, a thing or a finite substance, a “substratum,” which possesses an
existence that is independent of its causality (WL 6:229/GW 11:401,25/
563). This independent existence yields an infinite regress of causes:
what causes the finite nature of the substratum, which causes the initial
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 201

effect? What causes what causes the finite nature of the substratum? and
so forth (WL 6:231/GW 11:402,3/564). Plus a corresponding infinite
“progress” of effects: What is the effect of what is the effect of the initial
cause? and so forth.
This regress and this progress are a “bad infinite” (WL 6:232/
GW 11:403,12/565), since (to put it in the language of Being) nothing
here is what it is by virtue of itself, alone; or (to put it in the language of
Essence) we are stuck with an “immediacy” that has not revealed itself as
a product of negativity or reflection. However, both the arbitrary given-
ness or contingency and the bad-infinite regress and progress bring
out an important fact: that causality “posits in advance,” as indepen-
dent of itself, something that is not part and parcel of causality itself. It
posits in advance, Hegel says, a “passive substance” that is not “for itself”
(like the original substance or cause), but is nevertheless substance
insofar as it has independent existence (it has “abstract identity with
itself” [WL 6:234/GW 11:405,24–25/566]). This passive substance is
confronted by an “active substance,” which is the cause. By positing in
advance something independent of itself, on which to work, causality
has reestablished (WL 6:234/GW 11:405,29/566) a cause that can be
for-itself because it has an identity and power that are not identical with
its effect.
The relationship between the active and the passive substance now
turns out to have an important ambiguity. On the one hand, since it was
the active substance that “posited in advance” the passive one, the lat-
ter is superseded by the former. In acting on the passive substance, the
active substance is, in effect, acting on itself, posited as an other (WL 6:
234/GW 11:405,3/567). On the other hand, the active substance
also “supersedes its identity with” the passive substance (WL 6:234/
GW 11:405,18/567).32 It supersedes its identity with the passive sub-
stance because the passive substance must be independent of it in order
for its action on the passive substance to manifest its power, as causation
was intended, from its introduction, to do. Thus, the active substance
preserves the passive one, at the same time that it supersedes it. Hegel
says this occurs insofar as only certain features of the passive substance
are superseded (WL 6:235/GW 11:405,22–23/567); and he points out

32 A. V. Miller mistranslates the second half of this sentence. A more accurate translation
would say that the action of the active cause “is two actions in one: the sublating of its
determinedness – namely, of its condition (that is, the sublating of the self-subsistence
of the passive substance) – and that it sublates its identity with the passive substance,
and thus presupposes itself or posits itself as other.”
202 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

that transactions of this kind involve what amounts to violence (Gewalt:

WL 6:235/GW 11:405,25/567), which, he adds, is justified violence
(nur ihr Recht: WL 6:235/GW 11:406,12/568), insofar as the violent
cause is only acting on an other that it, itself, has posited in advance
(WL 6:235/GW 11:405,32/567). What the passive substance loses is an
immediacy or substantiality that were foreign to it in any case, because
it is a positedness (WL 6:235/GW 11:406,12–15/568).
However, a reversal now occurs:
But now in being posited in its positedness, or in its own determination,
[the passive substance] is not thereby superseded; rather, it only goes to-
gether with itself in that way, and thus in being determined it is originative. . . . Its
being posited by an other, and its own becoming are one and the same thing.
(WL 6:235–236/GW 11:406,15–26/568)

The passive substance’s “own determination” is positedness: It was in-

troduced as something that is not for-itself, but passive. So when it
is posited in this determination, it is simply confirmed as what it al-
ready is. But something whose being posited is as innocuous as this,
does not depend upon what is other than it; it is just as “original” as
the active cause; it “goes together with itself” and is itself, in fact, a
“cause” (WL 6:236/GW 11:406,24/568; compare, to the same effect,
WL 6:247/GW 12:13,28–32/579).
By becoming a cause in its own right, the passive substance supersedes
the effect that the active cause previously had, in it, and thus supersedes
the active cause’s causal substantiality (WL 6:236/GW 11:406,6/568),
rendering it, in effect, passive. However, inasmuch as the formerly pas-
sive substance is now a cause (and, to that extent, active), and the for-
merly active substance is now passive, the formerly active substance
regains its causal activity through its passivity, and thus active is pas-
sive and passive is active: The action of the “finite causality” of sub-
stances that are active to the exclusion of being passive, or passive to
the exclusion of being active (with the proneness that this finite causal-
ity has to spuriously-infinite regress and progress), is “bent around”
into something that “returns into itself”: an “infinite reciprocal action”
(WL 6:237/GW 11:407,26–33/569).

.. From Reciprocal Action to Freedom

It is useful to remember at this point that the whole purpose of Hegel’s
discussion of the “absolute relation,” in the forms (so far) of the
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 203

substance/accident relationship and the cause/effect relationship, was

to clarify the relationship between possibility and actuality, within abso-
lute necessity. Thus, we needn’t take him to be arguing (for example)
that there is no purpose for which substance and accident or cause
and effect can usefully be distinguished from one another. Rather, he is
arguing that as interpretations of the relationship between possibility and actu-
ality within absolute necessity, substance/accident and cause/effect fail to
do the job. And the “reciprocal action” that he is now about to analyze
is not a reciprocal action between just anything; it is a reciprocal action
between, in particular, possibility and actuality (or substance and acci-
dent, or cause and effect, understood as representing possibility and
actuality), within absolute necessity – where the latter’s significance (in
turn) is that it is the developed form of the negativity and reflection
that were Essence’s point of departure; and the significance of that
negativity and reflection is that it represents what was left of Being after
the “collapse” of true infinity and after the problems encountered by
Quantity and Measure.33 Bearing this context in mind can help us to
avoid a great deal of possible confusion.

33 Adolf Trendelenburg overlooked this point when he wrote that “freedom has . . . in
this relationship no other content than this consolation of substance, that what is
produced is after all substances and that the effects, as counteracting, are themselves
causes. This relation . . . can be applied anywhere that something moves. Who ever
called such a thing freedom?” (Logische Untersuchungen [3rd edition, Leipzig, 1870],
vol. 1, p. 63). The relation that I have interpreted Hegel as analyzing cannot be
found “anywhere that something moves,” precisely because it is a relation between
negativity and determinateness (or between possibility and actuality, as representatives
of negativity and determinateness). (For a comprehensive study of and response to
Trendelenburg’s influential critique of Hegel, see Josef Schmidt, Hegels Wissenschaft
der Logik und ihre Kritik durch Adolf Trendelenburg [Munich: Johannes Berchmans
Verlag, 1977].) Charles Taylor’s resourceful and imaginative attempt (in his Hegel,
Chapter 11) to restate Hegel’s argument in Essence resembles Trendelenburg’s in its
failure to note the two key facts that I mentioned in the text: that substance/accident
and cause/effect, in Hegel’s analysis, are supposed to provide accounts of, in
particular, the relation between possibility and actuality in absolute necessity; and
that absolute necessity and Essence as a whole develop out of and are meant to
concretize Hegel’s initial conception (in the Doctrine of Being) of “negativity.”
Both of these key facts are relevant to Taylor’s problem of determining how Hegel
thinks he can show “through the causal relation itself, that is the relation of the
accidents among themselves, their inherence in the self-generating totality” (Hegel,
pp. 288–289); and they both give reasons for thinking that the fact that (as Taylor cor-
rectly says) “the transition from interaction to causation-out-of-totality . . . is grounded
on the whole earlier argument of the Logic, on the very conception of Essence as totality
whose parts follow one on another of necessity,” does not show that Hegel “gives us what
are only hints and traces of the higher reality which the lower is meant to be an emana-
tion from, and takes these for a proof ” (p. 294; punctuation altered for clarity). If the
substance/accident relation and the causal relation have entered the argument precisely
204 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

For the crucial final passage of Essence, in which we finally arrive

explicitly at “freedom,” I offer, first, a three-paragraph interpretative
precis, and then commentary.
“Reciprocal action” initially presents itself as a mutual causation
between two substances, each of which is active and, at the same
time, passive. But since the two substances are no longer significantly
different, there is no longer any need to think of them as distinct from
each other, so there is no need to think of their action as “reciprocal,”
either. “Reciprocal action” is just an “empty manner” of representing
what goes on (WL 6:238/GW 11:407,18–23/569). In reciprocal action,
as in causality, the cause stands in relation to itself, as cause, in the effect
(WL 6:238/GW 11:408,6–8/570). Reciprocal action has become, in
effect, an identity.
In this way, Hegel says, causality has returned to its “absolute con-
cept,” and at the same time arrived at the Concept itself (WL 6:238/GW
11:408,9–10/570). Hegel relates causation back to the difference
within real necessity in which “free actualities” (which, as I explained in
the text and note 28, earlier, were possibility and actuality, respectively)
confronted each other. Necessity was the “inner identity” between them;
and causality, Hegel says, is the “manifestation” of this inner identity, in
which “its shine of substantial otherness has superseded itself and ne-
cessity is raised to freedom” (WL 6:238–239/GW 11:408,12–18/570) – a
dramatic claim that he will now begin to explain.
Necessity and causality have “disappeared,” in reciprocal action, be-
cause by containing both this inner identity between possibility and ac-
tuality (on the one hand), and their absolute substantiality and thus
their absolute contingency in relation to each other (on the other
hand), necessity and causality are “the absolute contradiction” (WL
6:239/GW 11:408,26–31/570).

Necessity is being that is because it is [cf. WL 6:215/GW 11:391,13–

17/552]: it is the unity of being with itself, where being has itself as

as possible ways of understanding how possibility and actuality relate to each other, then
Hegel’s argument doesn’t proceed from “the causal relation itself,” but from the causal
relation as an account of the relation between possibility and actuality; which makes it easier to
see how the argument could make headway. And if, as I argued in 4.6–4.8, what Taylor
refers to as the “self-generating totality” or “the very conception of Essence as totality
whose parts follow one on another of necessity” is an elaboration, specifically, of negativ-
ity, then Hegel is relying neither on an unexamined premise that was smuggled into the
argument earlier, nor on mere “hints and traces,” but on an appropriate development
of a well-motivated conception that has survived the self-criticism undergone by Quality,
Quantity and Measure.
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 205

its ground; but the reverse is also true, that because it has a ground, it
is not being, but simply shine, relationship, or mediation. Causality is
this posited going-over of originative being, the cause, into shine or mere
positedness, and conversely of positedness into originativeness.
(WL 6:239/GW 11:408–409,32–38/570–571)

That is, causality is the “going-over” from the active to the passive sub-
stance, and vice versa, that we analyzed in the latter part of 4.16; and
Hegel is telling us that this going-over is another instance of the mutual
“going-over” of necessity into contingency (“shine, relationship, or me-
diation”) and of contingency into necessity, which we analyzed in 4.14.
This convertibility of originative being into positedness, and vice versa,
brings us to an “identity of being and shine” (of Sein und Schein). But this
identity is still something “inner”; “freedom” requires one more step.
The “movement” of causation – its development as an idea, which we
followed – brings this “inner necessity,” the inner identity of possibility
and actuality, cause and effect, being and shine, into the open. When that
happens, “Necessity becomes freedom, not by disappearing, but insofar as
its (as yet) inner identity [of possibility and actuality] is manifested” – the
manifestation that is carried out by the “movement” of causation (WL
6:239–240/GW 11:409,39–15/570–571; emphasis added).
How does the inner identity of possibility and actuality being mani-
fested constitute freedom? Here again, the first, vital thing to remember
is that the possibility and actuality (and necessity and substance and
causation) that are under discussion here are the latest incarnations
of the negativity or reflection with which the Doctrine of Essence be-
gan, and that this negativity was described by Hegel at its first intro-
duction, in “Quality,” as the “beginning of the subject” and as “being-
within-self” (WL 5:123/GW 21:103,27–28/115; emphasis added). If
anything is free, presumably it is a subject that is free. What, though,
is the connection between negativity’s latest incarnation, “reciprocal
action,” and freedom? Necessity and causality are often thought to be
essentially the opposite of freedom; why should reciprocal action be dif-
ferent from them, in this respect? Have we somehow leaped from one
polar opposite to the other? The answer to this last question is “no.”
Freedom is not the opposite of reciprocal action; nor is reciprocal ac-
tion the opposite of the cause/effect relationship; and cause/effect,
substance/accident, and necessity are not opposites of anything that
follows them, either, including freedom itself. No leap from one oppo-
site to the other has taken place here, nor even a transition through
intervening stages which amounts to such a leap. No leap is necessary
206 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

precisely because all of the concepts in question are elaborations of

negativity, and thus of the “beginning of the subject,” so that the transi-
tion to freedom is not the introduction of something that is completely
different from what goes before it, but rather the emergence of some-
thing that was implicit in all of the stages or incarnations of negativity
(both in Essence and, even earlier, in Being).
However, a transition, and an important one, certainly does take
place here. We arrive at “the Concept, the realm of subjectivity or of
freedom” (WL 6:240/GW 11:409,6–7/571), to which the third and fi-
nal part of the Logic will be devoted. How does freedom (subjectivity,
the Concept) differ from the prior incarnations of negativity? It differs,
Hegel says, by being the manifestation of the inner identity that previous
incarnations of negativity such as absolute necessity embodied. Why is
“manifestation” so important, here? Manifestation overcomes the di-
chotomy of “inner” and “outer,” on which this identity was previously
hung up, insofar as it was merely an “inner” identity. “Actuality” itself
was introduced as the unity of inner and outer, essence and existence.
Initially, the “absolute” embodied this unity in an external way, because
it was external to the reflection that contemplated it. Actuality properly
so called, in the forms of possibility, actuality, and necessity, was the abso-
lute’s own reflection of itself, which then was unified with the absolute in
the absolute “relation” (substance, causation, etc.) (WL 6:186–187/GW
11:369,3–3/529). Thus, the absolute relation, especially in its ultimate
forms as causation and reciprocal action, manifests the unity of inner
and outer that actuality, as such, was supposed to be about. The actual
is “manifestation” inasmuch as “it is, in its exteriority, itself, and it is only
in its exteriority – that is, as a movement that differentiates itself from
itself and determines itself – that it is itself” (WL 6:201/GW 11:381,27–
30/542; emphasis altered). It is only in causality and reciprocal action
that this manifestation is complete, and when we see what has thus been
completed, we see – Hegel asserts – that it is freedom.
This accomplishment of “manifestation” – that the actual “is, in its
exteriority, itself,” or that the “inner identity [of possibility and actual-
ity] is manifested ” – should remind us of the problem that led to the
“collapse” of being-for-self or true infinity: that we were unable, with
the resources available at that point, to conceptualize the unity of true
infinity and determinate being (see 3.24). Possibility and actuality, as
aspects of absolute necessity, and thus as developed forms of negativity,
parallel true infinity as an alternative development of negativity, and if
their inner identity is in fact “manifested,” it seems that something very
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 207

like the unity of true infinity and determinate being has in fact been
achieved. We will examine this relationship further in the next chapter.
Regarding the issue of freedom, however: Beyond the fact that it
has to do with a subject (in the form of negativity), we still face the
question, why is it appropriate to describe what has been completely
“manifested,” here – this unity of inner and outer, possibility and ac-
tuality – as freedom? The answer is that what has been completely man-
ifested or unified here amounts to self-determination. It is something
that determines itself in its exteriority, and in so doing, remains it-
self. If freedom is anything, presumably it is self-determination. Ab-
solute necessity was self-determination insofar as it unified possibility
(the “inner”) with actuality (the “outer”), by generating its own con-
tingency (possibility/actuality) within itself. It was self-determination
because it could not be accused of depending on something external –
on “determinations, circumstances, and conditions” – to determine
specifically what it would be. However, the process of self-manifestation,
itself, which Hegel had identified as the “content” of the absolute
(WL 6:194/GW 11:375,11/536), could still be identified as external
to absolute necessity; in which case, absolute necessity would in that
respect not yet be fully self-determining. Substance and causation (the
“absolute relation”) then unified the self-determination that absolute
necessity was, with the process of self-manifestation itself (and thus with
the “absolute”), thus making self-determination self-determined in ev-
ery possible way. The result, Hegel says, must clearly be freedom.
So the point of Hegel’s whole analysis of the modalities (from con-
tingency through absolute necessity) and substance and causation as
“manifestation” and thus as (in every way) self-determination is to show
that something that is, at least, a close relative of freedom, is not only not
incompatible with necessity (as an interpretation of the relation between
essence and determinateness, or God and the world), but is a neces-
sary articulation of necessity (as such an interpretation). This is Hegel’s
answer to the long-running dispute in metaphysics and theology as to
whether God is free in the sense of arbitrary, able to act on any “whim”
whatever, or free only in the sense of doing the best (what expresses
his essence as rational and caring, and what thus expresses himself ).
Late medieval theologians such as William of Ockham favored the for-
mer interpretation of God’s freedom, whereas earlier theologians like
St. Thomas Aquinas, and rationalists like Leibniz and Spinoza, favored
the latter interpretation. Hegel’s answer is that God’s freedom is his self-
determination, and that this self-determination is absolute necessity,
208 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

and thus in no way arbitrary (so that at this level, Ockham is wrong) –
but that this absolute necessity includes a domain of contingency or
arbitrariness, as a necessary moment within it (and at this level, the
rationalists are wrong).

.. What Sort of “Freedom” Is This?

Interpreting the necessity-freedom transition in this way inevitably
raises the question of what (if anything) this analysis of divine freedom
has to do with the freedom of individual humans. I have indicated the
general lines of my response to this question in Chapter 3 (especially
3.17), where I explained that Hegel is presenting “God” (initially, in
the form of true infinity) as the achievement, by finite beings and in par-
ticular (no doubt) by humans, of selfhood or self-determination, and
thus of full “reality”; so that when this reality (God, essence, possibility)
determines itself, in the Doctrine of Essence, as existence, actuality, and
so on, this event can at the same time be read in reverse, in the manner
of the chapter on “Quality,” as existing and actual humans achieving
selfhood and self-determination – and thus, their own freedom, as well
as their reality – as this God. The sequence of the argument (in one
case, from the finite to the infinite, and in the other case, from essence
or possibility to existence or actuality) should not be interpreted as a
causal sequence, or a sequence of intention and action, or a derivation
of something less real from something more real. The fact that the fi-
nite is discussed before the infinite does not mean that it is more real
than the infinite (quite the reverse is the case, in fact); and likewise the
fact that essence and possibility (“God”) are discussed before existence
and actuality (the world and humans) does not mean that the former
are more real or more fundamental than the latter. On the contrary,
the relationship is what is fundamental; so once again, as I explained
in 3.17, Hegel is never a theologian as opposed to a humanist, or a
humanist as opposed to a theologian; he is always both at once. What
makes Hegel’s discussion of freedom in Essence seem distant from any
discussion of human beings is that our habitual way of thinking about
God and humans is essentially the “spurious infinity” way, in which God
and humans are polar opposites. When we think of them in terms of
true infinity, instead, in which the infinite is the self-superseding of the
finite and the finite achieves reality through that self-superseding, then
God’s freedom (“manifestation”) can at the same time be humans’ free-
dom (self-superseding) and realization. All of this will become clearer
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 209

in the Doctrine of the Concept (see especially 5.2), and especially in

the Philosophy of Spirit (see Chapter 6).
Even apart from the issue of the relation between theology and hu-
mans, what Hegel means to say about the relation between necessity and
freedom has seldom been understood. Friedrich Engels propounded
an influential misinterpretation when he wrote that according to Hegel,
freedom is “the appreciation of necessity.”34 Hegel does use the quoted
phrase in a couple of places, but not as a definition or explanation of
freedom.35 It should be clear from the account that I’ve given of Hegel’s
definitive treatment, in the Logic, of necessity and freedom, how far off
the mark Engels’s interpretation is, since the relation between freedom
and necessity, here, has nothing to do with any “appreciation of” neces-
sity. Unfortunately, such influential twentieth-century commentaries as
Stace’s The Philosophy of Hegel and Taylor’s Hegel have not fully clarified
what Hegel is driving at in his discussion (see notes 27 and 33), if it’s
not what Engels suggests. So it’s not surprising that Hegel’s account of
freedom tends not to be taken very seriously by (at least) Anglophone
writers who survey and compare leading treatments of the subject.
I hope that what I have been laying out makes it clearer what Hegel
is driving at. As I explained in 3.11, Hegel is neither a Kantian incom-
patibilist (his efforts in “Quality” are clearly intended to overcome the
major problem of intelligibility that is widely perceived in Kant’s in-
compatibilism), nor a Hobbes- or Hume-style compatibilist. (Still less is
Hegel a “dialectical materialist,” since like other scientisms, dialectical
materialism has, as far as I can see, no developed position at all on the

34 Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring; Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Moscow: For-
eign Languages Publishing House, 1962), p. 157; Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. 20,
p. 106. Without naming Hegel or Engels, A. J. Ayer says that “some philosophers have
defined freedom as the consciousness of necessity” (in his essay, “Freedom and Ne-
cessity,” reprinted in Gary Watson, ed., Freedom of the Will [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982], p. 18; originally in his Philosophical Essays [London: Macmillan, 1954]),
and raises reasonable objections to such a view: “I do not become free by becoming
conscious that I am not,” and if the idea is that I can “master” necessity by becoming
conscious of it, then that “necessity” seems not to be necessary, after all (p. 19).
35 At EG §467, Hegel writes: “With insight into necessity [Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit], the
last immediacy, which still attaches to formal thought, has vanished.” His point is that
with such insight, thought is no longer subject to the dictates of an “immediate” given,
but rather “seeks and finds in the object only itself ” (EG §467A, TWA 10:287/227).
Hegel’s idea of thought finding itself in reality has little in common with Engels’s notion
that history and nature are subject to “laws” that the scientifically informed person
will “free” himself by obeying. See Bernhard Lakebrink, Die Europäische Idee der Freiheit
(Leyden: Brill, 1968), p. 322 n.1.
210 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

nature of freedom.) The “necessity” that Hegel discusses in “Essence”

is not the necessity of natural laws, which empiricists such as Hobbes
and Hume seek to demonstrate is compatible with our being free in the
sense that we are responsible for our actions; rather, it is a relationship
between possibility and actuality, the inner and the outer, or negativity
and determinateness, whose ultimate purpose, therefore, is to explain
how selfhood (embodied in negativity, the inner, or possibility) can de-
termine itself in specific ways. Thus, “necessity” as such already embodies
selfhood, freedom, and responsibility, implicitly – which is certainly not
the case with the necessity of natural laws, in empiricist compatibilism.
Hegel’s fundamental argument for the compatibility of freedom and
natural determinism is his argument, in “Quality,” for the unreality
of the finite, as such, which makes infinite freedom what is real, and
the finite (and its determinism, if any) a moment within – deriving
whatever reality it has from – that infinite freedom, and consequently
perfectly compatible with it. Hegel’s analysis of necessity and freedom
in “Essence” (like his analysis of Nature and of the freedom of Spirit,
in the second and third volumes of the Encyclopedia) reformulates and
defends this argument in “Quality,” by showing how negativity (the gist
of true infinity, which survives the latter’s “collapse”) can determine
itself, and thus how there can be an intelligible relationship between
negativity (as infinite or “reality”-conferring) and determinateness, so
that the infinite and the finite, or negativity and its determinacy, can
indeed relate to one another in something like the way in which they
were supposed to relate to each other in true infinity. (The specifics of
this relationship are made more explicit in the Doctrine of the Concept,
which follows; see 5.2) Taken “by itself,” without this context, Hegel’s
account of necessity and freedom has no intelligible relevance to the
traditional problem of the relation of freedom to reality.
Granting (perhaps) that Hegel has identified an impressive kind
of self-determination, in “Essence,” we still might wonder what this self-
determination has to do with human freedom, if we suppose (following
Kant) that human freedom has an important connection with the ca-
pacity for thinking. So far, Hegel hasn’t mentioned thought, or (for that
matter) anything at all that sounds distinctively human, in his systematic
development of “freedom,” though his mentioning of “subjectivity” and
of the “Concept,” in connection with this “freedom,” certainly suggests –
accurately – that he thinks that this freedom has an important connec-
tion with thought. But what kind of connection is it, and by what right
does he think this?
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 211

The first part of the answer to this question is implicit in what I

have said about the fundamental role of negativity in the Doctrine of
Essence. Negativity, of course, is the negation of negation, or “negative
unity with oneself” (WL 5:124/GW 21:103,31/115). When Hegel (in
“Quality”) introduces the moral “ought” as an example of how negativ-
ity can be implemented, it is clear (if it wasn’t already) that negativity
is a sophisticated relationship that is likely to involve thought in many
cases – even if it isn’t immediately obvious that it must always involve
thought. The second part of the answer to the question is that while
“freedom,” “subjectivity,” and the “Concept” may be epitomized in some
of the highest capacities of humans, including thought, they needn’t
always involve what we would immediately recognize as thought. The
concept of “thought,” as such, never appears, as a topic, in the Logic,
but only in the second part (§465) of the Philosophy of Spirit.36 So we
can’t simply assume that what Hegel refers to as “subjectivity” and as
“freedom” in the Logic is meant to have all of the features that we may
associate with freedom; rather, it seems likely from the layout of topics
in the System that the Logic is meant to analyze a structure that is essen-
tial to what we understand as freedom, but will require much further
development before it acquires all of the features that we associate with
freedom. (I already mentioned in the previous chapter this distinctive
feature of Hegel’s procedure, in his System, that the most fundamental
or germinal structures of the “subject” and freedom present themselves,
in the Doctrine of Being, long before they are articulated as “subjec-
tivity” as such, and as the “realm of freedom,” in the Doctrine of the
Concept; and a similar relationship holds between the Doctrine of the
Concept and the Philosophy of Spirit.) In their simplest forms, it seems,
subjectivity and the Concept need not yet involve what we would rec-
ognize as thought. So we should be prepared to find that Hegel is in
fact using “freedom,” as well, in a wider sense than a Kantian might be
inclined to use it – as encompassing modes of self-relationship that are
not necessarily as developed as those that we tend to focus on under
that heading, in human beings, but that have an important similarity
to those developed forms, which makes it appropriate to class them all
under the same overall title.

36 This is despite the fact that in the Introduction to the Science of Logic, Hegel describes the
“object” of logic as “thought, or more determinately, conceptual thought”(WL 5:35/GW
21:27,28/43). Evidently, the Logic, by itself, does not arrive at a full conception of its
object; it is not a self-sufficient science. Only philosophy as a whole is self-sufficient in
the sense that it analyzes all of the concepts that it employs.
212 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Thus, when Klaus Düsing complains, as I mentioned in the introduc-

tion to this chapter, that Hegel does not show “why, in fact, the sepa-
ration between the substances [at the end of the Doctrine of Essence]
must be overcome by a thinking and not just an essentially existing self-
relationship,”37 I think Hegel’s reply would be that Düsing is employing
an overly simple dichotomy, because every “existing self-relationship”
will involve (insofar as it is based on negativity) something that is akin
to “thought,” but many of them will not involve what we would nor-
mally describe as thought, as such. That is why Hegel’s development
of concepts, in the Encyclopaedia, arrives at what he calls “freedom” in
the Concept, but only arrives at “thought” in the Philosophy of Spirit.
This complex state of affairs results from Hegel’s early introduction of
negativity, in the Doctrine of Being, and his painstakingly step-by-step
development of its successive forms. And that in turn reflects his con-
viction that while freedom has an important relationship to thought, it
also has important features – those embodied in negativity and in the
Concept – that don’t involve the presence of thought, as such. But the
other side of the coin is that Hegel does show that something that is
akin to thought – namely, the Concept – is needed in order to resolve
the problems represented by the active and the passive substance, at
the end of the Doctrine of Essence. (Just as something that is akin to
thought – namely, true infinity – was needed in order to resolve the
problems of finitude, in the Doctrine of Being.) Hegel shows, as we
have seen, that freedom in the sense of self-determination is needed in
order to resolve the problems represented by the active and the passive
substance; and he goes on to show that this freedom involves a new
structure, which he calls the “Concept,” and he calls it that precisely
because of its affinity to processes of thought (even though it is not
meant to be “thought” in the most literal sense of the word “thought,”
which is something that we will arrive at only in the Philosophy of Spirit).
As for Rolf-Peter Horstmann’s view that Hegel’s oft-repeated claims
that (as Horstmann puts it) “thinking and being are one and the same,
or that only thinking has being,” reflect a “conviction” that Hegel “never
felt any need to question,”38 it seems quite uncharitable, in view of the
fact that on one reasonable and not very novel interpretation, which

37 Klaus Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1976), p. 231;
emphasis added.
38 Article, “Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,” in Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, 1998), vol. 4, pp. 265 and 266 (emphasis added).
 identity, contradiction, actuality, and freedom 213

is the interpretation for which I am arguing, Hegel’s entire philosoph-

ical system, in the Encyclopedia, is intended to prove the truth of that
conviction.39
In the next chapter, we will see how Hegel conceptualizes manifested
self-determination, or freedom, as the Concept and the “Idea.”

39 It could be true that Hegel never doubted the truth of his idealist claims. But he was
clearly very well aware that this truth could not be taken for granted, but had to be
demonstrated.
 5

FREEDOM, GOD, AND THE REFUTATION

OF RATIONAL EGOISM
(SCIENCE OF LOGIC III)

.. From Substance to the “Concept”

Hegel introduces the Concept as a permutation of the pattern that
was constituted by the “active” and “passive” substances. The two sides
of necessity – actuality and possibility – which had taken the form of
the active and the passive substance, now become the “singular” (das
Einzelne) and the “universal” (das Allgemeine). The difference, however,
from the previous pattern, is (1) that the two moments that I just men-
tioned, the singular and the universal, are joined by a third moment, the
“particular” (die Besonderheit), which shares features with each of them
(determinateness with the singular, and “reflection into itself” with the
universal), and especially (2) that all three are now described as “total-
ities” (WL 6:240/GW 11:409,20,25/571), by which Hegel means that
each contains, implicitly, the entire system composed of all three of
them (WL 6:252/GW 12:16,26/582, and EL §160). All of this is due to
the fact that, since the two sides of the previous pattern (namely, the
active and passive substances, and their predecessors) have now been
“manifested” as “identical,” they can be distinguished and related to
each other only by a completely new type of concept, which is what
“totality” and the “Concept” will be.
The Concept, Hegel writes,

is to be regarded in the first instance simply as the third to being and essence,
to the immediate and to reflection (WL 6:245/GW 12:11,23–24/577). [It
is] the unity of being and essence. Essence is the first negation of being,
which thus became Shine; the Concept is the second negation or negation
of this [first] negation, and is therefore being once more, but being that
has been restored as its infinite mediation and negativity in itself. . . . The
Concept . . . is the truth of the substantial relation, in which being and

214
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 215

essence achieve the fulfilment of their self-standingness and their deter-

mination through each other. The truth of substantiality proved to be
the substantial identity, which is just as much – and is only as – positedness.
(WL 5:269–270/GW 12:29,2–16/596; emphasis added)

Essence was a negation of being in that it represented solely the “inter-

nal,” the “in itself” dimension, or “reflection,” as opposed to the imme-
diacy that was being. The Concept negates this first negation, essence,
and “restores” being, with its immediacy, by “manifesting” the unity of
inner and outer, possibility and actuality, substance and accident, cause
and effect, passive substance and active substance, that the “substan-
tial relation” (or “actuality”) was about. In this sense, the Concept is
“the truth of the substantial relation.”1 This “manifestation” creates a
new immediacy, and thus “restores” being – but it restores being and
its immediacy “as [their] infinite mediation and negativity in itself”: that
is, it restores immediacy as infinite mediation, in accordance with the
famous saying of the Introduction to the Doctrine of Being that “There
is nothing in heaven or in nature or spirit or anywhere else that does
not equally contain both immediacy and mediation, so that these two
determinations reveal themselves to be unseparated and inseparable and
the opposition between them to be a nullity” (WL 5:66/GW 21:54,23–
28/68; see 4.7). The restored being and immediacy, the “manifesta-
tion,” that is the Concept will not be mediated in the way that essence
was mediated – by “reflection.” But in order to be the truth of essence
and reflection, as well as the truth of being, it will contain something
that is equivalent to reflection’s “positedness.” This will be the Concept’s
determinateness, in the two forms of particularity and singularity.
On the other hand, the moment of the Concept that corresponds to
reflection’s “positing ” – namely, the Concept’s “pure relation to itself,
which is this relation by positing itself through negativity” (WL 6:274–
275/GW 12:33,31–32/601) – Hegel will call “universality” (Allgemein-
heit). Being is something simple (einfach) that immediately disappears
in its opposite, or nothing; “the universal, on the other hand, is the sim-
ple which is just as much the richest in itself, because it is the Concept”
(WL 6:275/GW 12:33,11–13/602), which inherits the mediation that
went with essence and reflection; and because it has this richness or

1 This truth can be tracked as the “substantial identity” at WL 6:233/GW 11:404,17/566,

originating at WL 6:225/GW 11:398,18/559 and terminating at WL 6:239/GW
11:408,15/570.
216 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

mediation within it, otherness and opposition do not cause it to disap-

pear. The universal is

the soul of the concrete, which it indwells, unimpeded and equal to itself
in the concrete’s manifoldness and diversity. It is not dragged into the
process of becoming, but continues itself undisturbed through that process
and possesses the power of unalterable, undying self-preservation.
(WL 6:276/GW 12:34,8–12/602)

By “soul,” here, Hegel means, not an added “component,” but rather

something like the Aristotelian “form” that actualizes the potential con-
stituted by its “matter.” The “soul,” as Aristotle conceives of it, is precisely
such a form. As a “soul” in this sense, the universal is not separable
from or opposed to the concrete; it is because of this intimacy that
the universal can be “unimpeded and equal to itself” in the concrete’s
manifoldness and diversity.

.. The Concept as “Free Love ” and True Infinity

At the same time that the “universal” avoids “disappearing into” its op-
posite, as “being” did (see previous paragraph), it also avoids being
drawn into the “relativity” to others that characterized the domain of
essence. “What was mere contingency, for substance as such, is the Con-
cept’s own mediation with itself, its own immanent reflection” (WL
6:276–277/GW 12:34–35/603): it’s all within the “identity” that is the
Concept’s self-determination. Consequently,

the Concept is not the abyss of formless substance, or necessity as the inner
identity of things or states that are distinct from and limit each other;
rather, as absolute negativity, it is the shaper and creator [das Formierende
und Erschaffende]. . . . The universal is therefore free power [die freie Macht];
it is itself and overgrasps [übergreift] its other, but not by doing violence to
it [nicht als ein Gewaltsames]; on the contrary, the universal in its other is
tranquil and with itself. We have called it free power, but it could also be
called free love and limitationless blessedness [schrankenlose Seligkeit], because
it bears itself toward what is different from it as toward itself; in it, it has
returned to itself.
(WL 6:277/GW 12:35,38–6/603)

These remarkable theological claims – “the shaper and creator,”

“love,” “blessedness” – make sense in the light of the interpretation of
Essence and the transition to the Concept that I have been developing,
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 217

according to which negativity, in Essence and in Essence’s successors,

carries with it the potential for transcendence that Hegel developed in
true infinity, so that a significant part of Hegel’s overall intention in
the Logic is to capture, in his successive formulations, what he takes to
be true in traditional theism – while at the same time avoiding (as he
did initially through his critique of “spurious infinity”) what he takes to
be false in it. The argument in “Quality” moved upward, from determi-
nate being to the something and from the finite to the infinite, while
here, in the “Concept,” it is moving downward, from universality to
determinateness, but in both cases, Hegel aims to formulate a relation-
ship between the transcendent and the immanent, the “creator” and
the “created,” which is hierarchical but does not oppose them to each
other in such a way that they are both rendered finite by it. The univer-
sal has “power,” Hegel tells us; it is clearly superior to, or has authority
over, particular determinateness. That is how it captures the traditional
notion of transcendence. Similarly, he earlier ascribed “absolute power”
to substance, over against its accidents (WL 6:220/GW 11:395,5/556).
But unlike substance’s superiority, the universal’s superiority entails no
violence, no Gewalt; the universal “bears itself toward” particular deter-
minateness “as toward itself,” having “returned to itself” in it, so that the
universal’s “power” can just as appropriately be called “love.”2 Whereas,
by contrast, the passive substance did suffer “violence,” which Hegel
there described as “the appearance of power, or power as something ex-
ternal” (WL 6:235/GW 11:405,26/567). When the passive and active
substances became identical – when their “inner identity” was mani-
fested, thus giving rise to the free Concept – something emerged that is
truly transcendent, because it doesn’t define itself through opposition
to (or as something external to) what it “transcends.” By embodying

2 In his “Begriff und Realität. Hegels Aufhebung des metaphysischen Wahrheitsbegriffs,”

in Rolf-Peter Horstmann, ed., Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), Michael Theunissen exhibits sympathy with important aspects
of Hegel’s philosophical theology (“a new alliance, which is just as remote from deifying
man as from annihilating him” [p. 356]), but unfortunately he takes Hegel’s talk of the
“power” of the Concept as implying “conflict [Kampf ]” and “the complete subjection
[Unterwerfung] of the other” (p. 355). I don’t think Theunissen could interpret Hegel’s
talk of “power” in this way if he understood negativity, and the finite’s self-transcendence,
together with the permutations of negativity in Essence and the Concept, as (as I’ve
argued that Hegel intends them) pursuing the selfhood and reality of determinate being
and the finite. The “power” that the Concept exercises, then, is simply the authority of
one’s own selfhood and reality (see 3.16), which is why Hegel can describe what exercises
that power as “not violent” and as “free love.”
218 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

power that bears itself toward particular determinateness as it bears

itself toward itself – that is, that bears itself toward particular determi-
nateness with love – the Concept’s version of transcendence avoids the
kind of (“spuriously infinite”) opposition between the universal and de-
terminateness that would render the universal finite and thus vitiate its
claim to transcendence. As I pointed out in 3.11, the formula of “with
itself in its other” first appears in connection with true infinity, and its
reappearance here – in the statement that “the universal in its other is
tranquil and with itself ” – is not accidental. The Concept embodies true
infinity more explicitly than anything that preceded it, after true infinity
itself. With the Concept, we begin to see Hegel’s reply to the challenge
that was presented by “atomism” and egoism, at the end of “Quality”:
namely, a reformulation of true infinity that enables it to withstand that
challenge (as I will explain in the remainder of this chapter).

.. Why Call This a “Concept”?

Hegel goes on to say that there are two kinds of “universality.” In the
first, the universal relates the particular to what is other than it, and
the two are “resolved” in a “higher universal” in the way that species
are resolved in a higher genus (WL 6:278–279/GW 12:36,18–24/604–
605). This is the familiar conception of universality, in which a wider,
more abstract concept is more “universal,” in the sense of more in-
clusive, than a narrower, more specific concept. Hegel describes the
determinateness of this kind of universality as “shining outward,” into
relations with “others,” and as the “first negation” of universality. In the
second kind of universality, however, whose determinateness Hegel de-
scribes as “shining inward,” and as the “second negation” of universality
(WL 6:278/GW 12:35–36,27–38),
life, I, spirit, absolute Concept are not universals merely in the sense of
higher genera, but are concretes whose determinatenesses, too, are not
species or lower genera but genera which, in their reality, are simply in
themselves and fulfilled by that.
(WL 6:279/GW 12:36,27–31/605)

The “universals” that Hegel mentions here – life, I, spirit, absolute Con-
cept – all have the “superiority” or “authority” that I was just describing
the Concept’s universality as having: They all have (loving) power over
their determinatenesses, a power that their determinatenesses do not
have over them. They all have, in one form or another, the role of spec-
ifying, from within themselves, a world. The “I” is Hegel’s first example
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 219

of the Concept itself, in his introductory section, “On the Concept in

General” (WL 6:253/GW 12:17,28/583), which I will discuss in the re-
mainder of this section. “Life” is the first, immediate form of the Idea,
and the Idea is the Concept as objective as well as subjective (see 5.10–
5.16). “Spirit,” finally, is “the Idea that has arrived at its being-for-self”
(EG §381/8), so it is again a form of the Concept. Thus the universals
that Hegel mentions are all versions of the universality of the Concept,
which has the distinctive superiority, authority, or (loving) “power” that
I’ve been describing.
Why does Hegel call this superior, authoritative, and loving “power”
the “Concept,” if, as he makes clear, its superiority, authority, or power is
not that of a conventional “concept” or “universal,” such as we use to sort
out and categorize objects? First, the two kinds of concept or universal
both play roles in (non-“violently”) determining, or specifying, deter-
minate things. The more familiar kind does so, as Hegel pointed out, by
“shining outward,” comparing things to others. That is a “first negation”
of universality in that it makes things determinate or non-“universal”
by specifying their relations to others (that are similar to them or
different). The second kind of concept or universal, on the other
hand – the one that Hegel is bringing to our attention – makes things
determinate or non-“universal” by “shining inward,” expressing the
“own, immanent character” (WL 6:278/GW 12:36,8/604) that deter-
mines them. This is a “second negation” in that it seeks to return to
the universality that was negated by the first negation, but to do so in
a way that brings out that universality’s selfhood (its “own, immanent
character”) as determining the determinate.
But beyond the fact that they both determine, or specify, determi-
nate things, there is another, more specific feature that the two kinds
of “concept” or “universal” share. This emerges when we ask what it is
that makes it possible for us to take seriously the idea of an “own, imma-
nent character” that determines its specific determinations. I suggest
that the idea of something being self-determining by its own, imma-
nent character derives its plausibility – just as the “ought” in “Qual-
ity” derived its plausibility – from our experience of stepping back, in
thought, from particular felt desires or inclinations and asking ourselves
whether it makes sense, all things considered, to act on those desires or
inclinations. That is, it derives its plausibility from the apparent role of
thought in making possible a kind of “ownness” of which it is unclear
how unthinking things could be capable – the apparent role of thought
to which Kant drew attention (see 1.2.2 and 2.1) with his account of
the Categorical Imperative, and to which Plato and Aristotle also draw
220 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

attention, in their works on ethics (see 2.3). It’s because of this role
of thought in our paradigmatic experiences of what seems to be self-
determination or “ownness” that it’s natural to conceive of the process
by which the successor to negativity and essence and substance (and so
forth) determines itself to particularity, as a “conceptual,” a thought-like
process. It seems to be the presence of something like thought that
makes it possible for something – namely, what Hegel is calling “univer-
sality” – to have the kind of superiority, authority, or loving power over
determinate particulars that the successor of negativity and essence and
substance (and so forth) would have to have in order to embody what
was true in what it succeeds. As I mentioned in 4.18, “thought” as such
doesn’t enter the development of Hegel’s system until well into the
Philosophy of Spirit. But it is clear that something analogous to thought is
playing a role as early as the “Ought,” in the first part of the Logic; and
it seems to be doing so here, in the Doctrine of the Concept, as well,
explaining why Hegel finds it appropriate to give the title of “Concept”
to the new type of self-determination that he arrives at here.
Against this background, we should be able to understand why the
illustration – “something familiar, a commonplace of our ordinary
thinking” – that Hegel offers us in his introductory section “On the
Concept in General,” is the “I ”: “ . . . the I is the pure Concept itself
which, as Concept, has come into determinate being” (WL 6:253/GW
12:17,30–33/583). Hegel goes on to say that Kant grasped, in effect, the
distinctive nature of the Concept, in his notion of the transcendental
unity of apperception:

It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique

of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the nature of the Concept is
recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the
I think, or of self-consciousness. . . . An object, says Kant (Critique of Pure
Reason, second edition, p. 137), is that in the concept of which the manifold
of a given intuition is unified. But all unifying of representations demands
a unity of consciousness which alone constitutes the connection of the
representations with the object and therewith their objective validity. . . . In
point of fact, the comprehension of an object consists in nothing else than
that the I makes it its own, pervades it and brings it into its own form,
that is, into the universality that is immediately a determinateness, or the
determinateness that is immediately universality.
(WL 6:254–255/GW 12:17–18,25–25/584–585)

As Hegel carefully goes on to explain, the “unity of consciousness” that

Kant pictures the I as producing is not the subjective connectedness
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 221

of (as we say) a “stream of consciousness,” but rather the kind of ob-

jective connectedness that is achieved by employing the “categories”
(WL 6:254–255/GW 12:18,7–16/584), such as substance, causation,
and objective temporal sequence. Their connection with the I is, I sug-
gest, that it is only by organizing its world in this way that the I can
conceive of itself as having a comprehensible history as part of that ob-
jective world. The I makes the object “its own” by understanding the
object in terms that allow the I to identify itself, in a coherent way, in re-
lation to the object. (In Kant’s example, the I understands the sequence
of events in a ship’s floating down the river with the aid of the concepts
of substance, causation, and temporal sequence, in such a way that the
I’s perceptions of those events make sense as parts of an identity of
the I through time and space that is related in an intelligible way to
those events [Critique of Pure Reason A 192/B237].) The “universality,”
then, in the final sentence of the block quotation, is the I’s coherent
understanding of itself; and the “determinateness” that this universality
“is immediately” (because this determinateness is what makes possible
the I’s coherent understanding of itself – its functioning as an I) is the
determinate order of the objective world.
What this picture of the I has to do with the “ought” and (thus)
with going beyond finitude, and with freedom, is that the I likewise
goes beyond the merely “given” contents of subjective consciousness,
by unifying them into a conception of an objective world of which it is
a part. Indeed, in going beyond them, it declares and responds to their
nothingness, in themselves, just as the “ought” declares and responds to
the nothingness, in themselves, of finite desires and inclinations (their
“passing over” into each other, their failure to be what they are by virtue
of themselves). The merely “given” contents of subjective consciousness
are, in fact, nothing in themselves; it is only insofar as they can be
integrated in some way into a conception of a world, in relation to or as a
part of which the integrating I can identify itself, that they have meaning
(compare 4.7, above). In this way, the integrating I is simply another
instance, alongside the “ought” and its transcendence of finitude, of
thought’s making possible the becoming of something that is in keeping
with selfhood, that is autonomous or free, and thus is real.3

3 Robert Pippin correctly focusses on the passage that I have just been discussing, from
“On the Concept in General,” as crucial for understanding Hegel’s relation to Kant
(Hegel’s Idealism [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], pp. 18, 232), but since
he doesn’t identify the issue about “reality” that I have argued that the “Quality” chapter
addresses, or the way in which Hegel draws on Kant’s “ought” in addressing that issue
(as I explained in 3.7), he is not in a position to interpret the Concept and its relation
222 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel left us with a potentially confusing picture insofar as the

Kantian concept that he brings explicitly to bear in “Quality” – namely,
the “ought” – stems (on its face) from Kant’s practical philosophy,
whereas the Kantian concept that he brings explicitly to bear in “On
the Concept in General” – namely, the transcendental unity of apper-
ception – stems from Kant’s theory of knowledge. We might wonder
whether this signals that the contrast between practice and theory is
somehow relevant to the relationship between the Doctrine of Being
and the Doctrine of the Concept. However, the distinction between
practice and theory itself in fact enters Hegel’s exposition explicitly
later on in the Doctrine of the Concept, as part of the Idea, and there
is no reason (apart from the divergence in Kantian borrowings, as be-
tween the Doctrine of Being and the Doctrine of the Concept) to think
that the distinction between practice and theory is meant to play any
role at all, prior to its explicit introduction. Indeed, it seems clear that
the two topics (“practice” and “theory”) are quite intentionally inter-
mixed to the point of indistinguishability, in “Quality.” So there is good
reason to think that Hegel does not intend to draw our attention, in
“On the Concept in General,” to Kant’s theory of knowledge as opposed
to his ethical theory, but rather that he is thinking, essentially, of what
Kant’s two theories have in common – namely, thought’s enabling the
becoming of something that is in keeping with selfhood, that is au-
tonomous or free, and thus is real – and that this feature that the two
theories have in common can be alluded to, for the sake of brevity, by
citing either one of them.
Hegel is addressing the issue, prior to any discussion of what qualities there
may be in the world (that is, “theory”) or what actions one ought to engage
in (that is, “practice”), of what is being, what is real, what “one” is. And
the relevance of thought, concepts, and “universality,” in connection
with that question, is that their potential or actual presence alters what
being and reality are, what “one” is. If the kind of thought, concepts
and universality that make autonomy or freedom or selfhood possible
are potentially or actually present, then a kind of reality – namely, self-
determining reality, which is “reality” as Hegel defined it in “Quality” –
is potentially or actually present, which would otherwise be out of the picture.4

to Kant as a further development of true infinity and its relation to Kant, in the way that
I’m suggesting here.
4 Thus I think that Kenneth Westphal is mistaken when he suggests that Hegel may
think “that determinations of value are the preeminent philosophical concern” (Hegel’s
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 223

In practice, for readers who are not already convinced of the reality of
transcendent freedom, God, or the soul, Kant’s argument in his ethical
works for the transcendent character of freedom is perhaps more likely
to be immediately appealing than his technical arguments about the
“I,” in his theory of knowledge. This may be the reason why Hegel chose
the ethical “ought,” rather than the transcendental unity of appercep-
tion, as his initial way of formulating the relevance of Kant’s thinking to
ontology, in “Quality.” But in principle, either concept could have done
the job. The spuriously infinite version of the unity of apperception would be the
metaphysical conceptions of God and the soul that Kant criticizes in the Tran-
scendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, but that nevertheless
do point, like the “ought,” to the possibility of going beyond the finite;
and then the truly infinite version of God and the soul – in contradis-
tinction to Kant’s skepticism about them – would be a version that
understands them not as a “power existing outside” the finite, but as
the finite’s self-transcendence in pursuit of its own reality. Indeed, this
seems to be just what the Doctrine of the Concept assumes has been
achieved by the Doctrines of Being and Essence, when it expresses their
outcome with the theological language that I interpreted in the previous
section (5.2), and what the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion assume
when they say that true infinity is the key to understanding God (VPRel.
1:213, 317/1:309, 425). In connection with the “ought” and freedom,
Hegel finds it necessary to criticize Kant for succumbing to a spurious
infinity, whereas in connection with God and the soul, Hegel thinks
Kant makes the apparently opposite mistake of succumbing to unnec-
essary skepticism. But in both cases, Kant’s mistake is ultimately rooted in his
failure to conceive of the “middle” path of true infinity or the Concept.
Thus, the reason why Hegel leaves us with two very different con-
ceptions of universality or of concepts – namely, the “first negation”
conception, according to which they are means of categorizing what
we find in the world, and the “second negation” conception, according
to which they are means of achieving selfhood – is precisely because he
wants to direct our attention to this preliminary question – which is nei-
ther theoretical nor practical, or is both – of what is being, what is real,
or what “one” is, and to the relevance to that question of the functioning

Epistemological Realism, pp. 113–114), which we can pursue after we’ve established that
we can know truth in the sense of “correctness.” Rather, Hegel thinks (certainly in the
Logic) that reality itself involves value, as a necessary aspect of self-determination (via the
“Ought” or the “Concept”).
224 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

presence of concepts or universality (as exhibited in the “ought” and in

the unity of apperception – that is, in the pursuit of selfhood). Where
there is a pursuit of selfhood, being is not merely finite and other-
determined, or “relative,” but rather is self-determining, and to that
extent more real, in the sense that Hegel defined in “Quality.” Seen in
relation to this goal of “reality,” Hegel’s accounts of the Concept, the
“concrete universal,” and so forth – together with his insistence that
“it is not the material given by intuition and representation that ought
to be vindicated as the real in contrast to the Concept” (WL 6:258/
GW 12:21,27–30/587) – are much less confusing and obscure than
they are when they are taken by themselves (if that were possible).

.. Substance and Subject

The fact that “substance” (in Essence) has been superseded by the Con-
cept, which – insofar as it has the manifest kinship to thought that we
have been examining, and that justifies its name – qualifies as “subject,”
is the long-awaited demonstration that, as Hegel had announced in
the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the true must be grasped and
expressed “not only as substance, but equally as subject” (3: 23/PS §17;
see 3.2 and 3.12). The final overcoming of Essence’s contrast between
inner and outer, which is accomplished when the “inner identity [of
possibility and actuality] is manifested,” as a result of the “movement” of
causation (WL 6:239/GW 11:409,2–6/571), yields “subjectivity” (WL
6:240/GW 11:409,6/571) because it yields something in which the two
poles, which previously were opposed to each other (as in possibility
and actuality, substance and accident, cause and effect, active and pas-
sive substance), are brought together into identity by something that,
as I have been arguing, is comparable to thought. What Essence has
done, which distinguishes this result from the anticipation of it that I
found in true infinity (3.12), is to bring out and underline, and then to
supersede, the distinction between the inner and the outer, the “in-
wardizing” (Erinnerung) of essence and (by contrast) the “external”
nature of being and existence. To supersede this distinction is to es-
tablish the resulting “subjectivity” as more fundamental than either being or
existence, as such, or the internal (essence). So this “subjectivity” itself is not
something internal, such as essence or the “stream of consciousness” that
I contrasted with Kant’s unity of apperception. Instead, it is a conception
of reality as such, which, insofar as it encompasses both being or existence and
negativity or essence, encompasses both something like objects and something
like consciousness. (I say “something like,” because “objects” as such and
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 225

“consciousness” as such are, in fact, later stages in the development of

this “subjectivity.”) It is called “subjectivity” because of the unifying role
that it assigns to something that is comparable, because of the tran-
scendence of finitude that it involves, to thought. But this “thought”
is not in any way “internal,” or subordinate to some other reality;
rather, it is supreme, or (as I said earlier) superior – and, at the same
time, “loving,” insofar as it bears itself toward the particular as toward
itself (5.2).
To appreciate the power of Hegel’s argument to the “Concept,” it is
useful to compare it to an important recent attempt to find a similar
power mainly in the version of the argument that Hegel gave earlier in
his Phenomenology of Spirit. Writing about Hegel’s account of subjectivity
both in the Phenomenology and in the Logic, before engaging in some
detail with the text of the former, John McDowell describes Hegel’s goal
as the avoidance of “a certain sort of philosophical anxiety. We shall no
longer need to be troubled by the spectre of a gulf between subject
and object, which is the pretext for a transcendental scepticism,”5 as
in Kant’s repeated assertions that we cannot know what things are “in
themselves.” McDowell describes this goal of Hegel’s as an “equipoise
between subjective and objective, between thought and its subject mat-
ter” (p. 3). He thinks that Kant was pursuing a similar goal in his Tran-
scendental Deduction of the categories, in the Critique of Pure Reason,
but that in the end, by restricting the application of the categories to
“things as they are given to our sensibility” (ibid.), with that sensibility’s
special attachment to space and time, Kant left an “unassimilated sub-
jectivity, a subjectivity [namely, this attachment to space and time] with
no balancing objectivity,” and a corresponding “unassimilated objec-
tivity” (in the “perhaps non-spatial and non-temporal thing in itself”)
(ibid.), and thus failed to achieve the desired equipoise. In pursuit of
it, McDowell writes, Hegel’s

whole-heartedness brings everything [including, presumably, space and

time – R. Wallace] within the scope of free subjective activity. . . . It is
Kant’s half-heartedness [that is, his restriction of the categories to things
as they are given to “our sensibility”] that spoils his attempt at an equipoise
between subjective and objective. Expanding the scope of intellectual
freedom [as Hegel does by bringing everything within the scope of free
subjective activity] does not tip the scale to the side of the subjective, as if

5 John McDowell, “The Apperceptive I and The Empirical Self: Towards a Heterodox
Reading of ‘Lordship and Bondage’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society
of Great Britain 47/48 (2003):1.
226 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

the objective (so-called, we would have to say) can only be a projection of

subjective activity, taken to be independently intelligible. That is just what
happens in Kant’s unsuccessful attempt at the equipoise. . . . Achieving a
genuine balance would allow subjectivity to be conceived as engaging with
what is genuinely objective. To hold that the very idea of objectivity can
be understood only as part of such a structure is exactly not to abandon
the independently real in favor of projections from subjectivity.
(p. 4; emphasis added)

McDowell’s point is that what he calls “the scope of free subjective activ-
ity” or “the scope of intellectual freedom” (which correspond to what
Hegel calls the “Concept” or “subjectivity”) must not be understood as “sub-
jective” in a sense that implies the absence of “engagement with what is genuinely
objective.” Rather, they must be understood as engaged, throughout, with
objectivity – presumably in the way that I described in my brief synopsis
of Kant’s account of the categories, in the previous section (5.3).
We can express McDowell’s point in the language of Hegel’s Logic
by saying that “subjectivity” (in the sense that’s identical with the “Con-
cept,” and that corresponds to McDowell’s “free subjective activity”)
emerges, within philosophy’s systematic development of its concepts
(that is, within the Logic), as a unity (a “manifested identity”) that su-
persedes the contrast between outer and inner, being (or existence)
and essence. And “objects” and “consciousness,” as such, emerge as de-
velopments of this same overarching unity (in the second section of
the Concept and in Nature, and in the Idea and Spirit, respectively).
Since “subjectivity” (the “Concept”) is such a unity, and since objects
and consciousness emerge from it, they all embody, by their very nature,
an equipoise between subjective and objective: They preclude any gulf
between subject and object, any possession by one side of features that
have no corresponding means of comprehension, on the other side.
The development of these concepts indicates their necessary relation
to one another; there is no way in which something that is appropriately
called an “objective reality” can exist that doesn’t have the conceptual re-
lationships that the development of reality and the development of ob-
jectivity reveal. Hegel’s argument for the conclusion that, as McDowell
puts it, “the very idea of objectivity can be understood only as part of such
a structure,” is that the very idea of a subject matter for discourse, which
Hegel identified initially as “being” and subsequently as “reality,” has
led, through the stages that we have been studying, to the conception of
subjectivity or the Concept, of which objectivity will emerge as a development.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 227

And objectivity in its turn, and its successor, which is Nature, will turn
out to require the more inclusive realities of the Idea and Spirit, which
reproduce on more developed levels the unity of the Concept (just as
the Concept reproduces on a more developed level the unity of true
infinity). So no un-“balanced” objectivity will ever be viable, by itself. We can
conclude, then, that fully articulate discourse will have to be conducted
in terms of an objectivity and an overarching unity (“subjectivity” or the
Concept; the Idea; or Spirit) that have this structure, in relation to each
other.
The reason why the overarching unity is called “subjectivity” is, as I
explained in 5.3, that in order to embody the transcendence of fini-
tude, it has to have the character of something like thought. The Con-
cept’s “subjectivity” itself cannot very well be described as “engaging with
what is genuinely objective,” since the category of objectivity doesn’t
exist yet; the contrast between objective and subjective, and thus the
category of objectivity, develop out of this “subjectivity” (in the sec-
ond and third parts of the Doctrine of the Concept, and in Nature
and Spirit). However, the Concept’s “subjectivity” originated, via the
long argument that we have been studying, in an analysis of determi-
nate being, which betrays no bias toward what’s ordinarily thought of
as “subjective” (see 3.4). So that Hegel’s account of this “subjectivity”
(as well as of the subsequent subjective/objective contrast) cannot be
accused of “subjectivism,” in what it presupposes. The prominence of
“subjectivity” (as thought) in the culminating third part of the Logic
and in Hegel’s system as a whole – that is, the fact that his system is
an “idealism” – is a result of argument rather than a result of an un-
derlying bias that was built into his premises. The Concept’s “subjec-
tivity” “engages with what is genuinely objective” in the sense that this
subjectivity develops from and into structures that are characterized just
as much by objectivity as by subjectivity. What is distinctive in Hegel’s
system is not a neglect of objectivity, but only that it locates objectiv-
ity within a context (an overarching unity) that has the character of
thought.
McDowell remarks, following Hans-Georg Gadamer, that “we need
[in the Phenomenology of Spirit] to arrive at the significance of appercep-
tion through the experience of mere consciousness, rather than just starting
with [apperception] (like Kant and Fichte), because just starting with
it leads only to the subjective idealism of §238” (of the Phenomenology),6

6 Op. cit., p. 14, note 17 (emphasis added).

228 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

which lacks the necessary “balance” between subjectivity and objectiv-

ity. Insofar as it puts apperception, or “subjectivity,” within a broader
context, in this way, the development of the Phenomenology does parallel
that of the Logic. But it’s only in the Logic that this context that Hegel
gives to apperception is explicitly ontological, so that we can understand
subjectivity and objectivity as aspects of reality, as such, thus understand-
ing both how Hegel differs from Kant, in regard to ontology, and what
Hegel means by his own “idealism.”

.. Particularity and Singularity: “Abstractness” and

“Emptiness” versus “Concreteness”
How the Concept preserves its superiority or “power” while avoiding
a “spuriously infinite” opposition between universality and determi-
nateness, we will see from its development as “particularity” and
“singularity.” The Concept must be determinate in order to preserve
Essence’s dimension of “positedness” (which in turn embodies the po-
lar structure of negativity, the negation of the negation). Initially, this
determinateness is “particularity” (Besonderheit). Hegel says that this par-
ticularity, initially, cannot involve a plurality of kinds, for which there
is “no inner measure or principle” (WL 6: 280/GW 12:37,2/606).7 In-
stead, the particular is simply a duplicate of the universal. “The uni-
versal determines itself; thus it is itself the particular” (WL 6: 281/
GW 12:38,19/606). In this way, it is “the totality and principle of its
diversity, which is determined wholly and solely by the universal itself”
(WL 6:281/GW 12:38,25/606); its two “kinds” (the Concept as uni-
versal and the Concept as particular) are “onefold” (einfach, “simple”)
(WL 6:280/GW 12:37,11/606).8
Hegel now describes the initial consequence, for universality, of the
determinateness that it has given itself. Universality becomes, as he calls
it, “abstract.” “Abstract” universality is a universality that is “opposed
to” determinacy (WL 6:275/GW 12:33,18/602), so that the particu-
lar is merely “clothed” by it (WL 6:283/GW 12:39,28/608) – its unity

7 Miller translates “insofern es deren eben nicht mehrere gibt” as “because there are no more of
them” (p. 606), rather than “because there is no plurality of them,” thus rendering the
argument unintelligible.
8 In nature, Hegel grants, a genus often contains more than two kinds; this he calls “the
impotence of nature, that it cannot adhere to and exhibit the strictness of the Concept
and runs wild in this blind unconceptual manifoldness”; we should not take this for more
than “the abstract aspect of nullity” (WL 6: 283/GW 12:39,15/608; first emphasis added).
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 229

with the particular is “immediate” (WL 6:284/GW 12:40,6/608), rather

than being “posited as a feature of” the universal (an ihr selbst gesetzt)
(WL 6:284/GW 12:40,15/609). When, on the contrary, the universal’s
unity with the particular is “posited as a feature of it,” the particular is a
determinateness that “relates itself to itself” (WL 6:288/GW 12:43,6/
612), and is called “singularity” (Einzelheit).
What this means is that the initial, “abstract” universality is one in
which there is no recognition, on the part of the universal, that it needs
to become determinate, and no recognition on the part of the deter-
minate particular that it is a determination of a universal. Instead, the
two are simply, flatly “opposed to” each other, as one kind of thing and
another kind of thing. That is, there is nothing about the universal
itself that calls for determination – its unity with the particular is not
“posited as a feature of it” – and there is nothing about the particular
itself that expresses its being a determination. Whereas, when the par-
ticular “relates itself to itself” as a determination, and thus as relating to
a universal, and when (by the same token) the universal exhibits itself as
something that needs to be determined (when its unity with the particu-
lar is “posited as a feature of it”), then they are both “totality”: They each
embody the system that is composed of both of them. This is necessary
because as “manifestation,” the Concept is supposed to overcome the
opposition of outer and inner, Being and Essence – an opposition that
recurs in the form of the opposition (the merely immediate unity) of
particular and abstract universal. To overcome this opposition, each of
its poles must embody the totality, in the way that Hegel describes.
The result, “singularity,” is also described by Hegel as the concrete –
as opposed to the abstract – universal (compare PR §§6R, 24R). The
concrete universal, or the Concept as singularity, is the same phe-
nomenon as the second type of universality, the “own, immanent
character” (WL 6:278/GW 12:36,8/604) that Hegel referred to ear-
lier. Now, he describes it as being “the principle of its differences . . . ;
the principle contains the beginning and the essence of its development
and realisation; whereas any other way of determining the Concept” –
such as the conventional determination of concepts as means of
classification – “is sterile” (WL 6:285/GW 12:41,16–19/610). Another
description that Hegel applies to this conventional conception – one
that plays an important role in his application of his theory of the
Concept to ethics – is that it is “empty”: “Every determinate concept is,
of course, empty insofar as it does not contain the totality, but only
a one-sided determinateness” (WL 6:285/GW 12:41,13/610). Thus,
230 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“emptiness” signifies, for Hegel, not the absence of any determinateness at

all (as he explicitly indicates at WL 6:285/GW 12:40,3–5/609), but the
absence, in particular, of “totality”: of the unity of universal and particular in
which they each embody the entire system that is composed of both of them. By the
same token, it also signifies the absence of the kind of relationship be-
tween universal and particular that Hegel describes as the relationship
of “principle” to “development and realisation.” The first instance of
this sort of intimate relationship that we encountered in the Logic was,
of course, true infinity (and its preformation as “negativity”). In true
infinity, the finite was real only through the infinite, and the infinite
was the self-superseding of the finite, so that each was (as Hegel says)
“with itself in its other.” Thus the finite, as real, embodies the infinite
as well as itself, and the infinite, as true, embodies the finite as well as
itself: They each embody the entire system that is composed of both
of them. “Totality” and “principle and realisation” are, in effect, new
names for what is already present in true infinity, with the addition (sub-
sumed within the new formulation) of the dimensions of quantity and
interiority.
“Abstract” or “empty” universality is, in Hegel’s view, a “wrong way
[Abweg], on which abstraction strays from the path of the Concept and
forsakes the truth” (WL 6:296–297/GW 12:49,30–32/619; emphasis
added), because it leads away from the issue that I described as that
of “what is being, what is real, or what ‘one’ is” (5.3) – an issue that
only concrete universality addresses – toward the description merely of
contingent states of affairs with no particular relation to that issue. Such
descriptions can, no doubt, be “true” in the sense of being “correct,”
but
whoever gives the name of truth to the correctness [Richtigkeit] of an intu-
ition or a perception, or to the agreement of a representation with an
object, at any rate has no expression left for that which is the subject
matter and aim of philosophy. We should at least have to call the latter
the truth of reason.
(WL 6:318/GW 12:65,4–9/636, emphasis added; cf. WL 6:29/GW
21:17,13–24/38; WL 6:265–266/GW 12:26,14–28/593)

Hegel himself generally reserves the honorific term, “truth,” for this
“truth of reason,” which has to do with the fundamental issue that I
described. “Reason” (Vernunft), here, means the faculty that deals with
that issue, as opposed to the faculty – the “understanding” (Verstand) –
that deals with issues of mere classification.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 231

.. The “Emptiness” of Kant’s Principle of Ethics

Following up on the discussion of the “concrete universal” that I was
just giving, this is a good point at which to look forward, for a moment,
to the role that Hegel’s notion of “abstract” or “empty” universality plays
in his critique of Kantian “morality,” in his Philosophy of Right and other
writings about ethics.9 In 2.3, I quoted Hegel’s charge, against Kant,
that although

knowledge of the will first gained a firm foundation and point of de-
parture in the philosophy of Kant, through the thought of its infinite
autonomy . . . – to cling on to a merely moral point of view without mak-
ing the transition to the concept of ethics [the transition that Hegel
himself makes in the PR] reduces this gain to an empty formalism, and
moral science to an empty rhetoric of duty for duty’s sake. From this point
of view, no immanent theory of duties is possible . . . a contradiction must
be a contradiction with something, that is, with a content which is already
fundamentally present as an established principle.
(PR 135R)

I mentioned in 2.3 that Hegel underestimates what Kant does toward

finding “content” in his Categorical Imperative. For example, Hegel
overlooks how the “universal law” test – could the agent will that her
maxim be a universal law, at the same time that she wills to act on it
herself? – can bring out a fundamental unfairness in the agent’s atti-
tudes as between herself and others. But I suggested (following Allen
Wood) that Hegel’s deeper charge against Kant’s treatment of the Cat-
egorical Imperative is that Kant assumes, without sufficient argument,
that it is not possible to be fully autonomous without caring about the
freedom and autonomy of others as well as of oneself (and thus about
fairness) – which is a charge that I myself developed further in 2.7. What
I want to point out here is how Hegel’s contrast between “concrete” uni-
versality, on the one hand, and “abstract” or “empty” universality, on the
other, which he develops in the Doctrine of the Concept, lies behind
and justifies this deeper charge that Wood and I think that Hegel is
making against Kant’s ethics.
In the passage that I just quoted a second time, Hegel describes Kant’s
ethical principle as formalistic and “empty,” and says that it provides no

9 I have found no discussion of Hegel’s “emptiness” charge against Kantian “morality”

(in the Philosophy of Right and elsewhere) that examines Hegel’s explanation of what he
means by “emptiness,” in the Doctrine of the Concept.
232 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

basis for an immanent theory of duties. In the Doctrine of the Concept,

he explains what he means by this “emptiness” charge:

Every determinate concept is . . . empty insofar as it does not contain the

totality, but only a one-sided determinateness. Even when it has some
other concrete content, for example man, the state, animal, etc., it still
remains an empty concept, since its determinateness is not the principle of
its differences; a principle contains the beginning and the essence of its
development and realization; any other determinateness of the notion,
however, is sterile.
(WL 6:285/GW 12:41,13/610; emphasis added)

So to avoid being “empty,” a concept’s determinateness must be the

principle of its differences (that is, of what it is differentiated into) –
it must contain the beginning and the essence of its development and
realization. Or it must contain the “totality,” which, as we recall, is the
situation in which, rather than being indifferent to each other, both of
the poles – the universality and the particularity – contain the entire
system that’s composed of both of them, which has the result that the
beginning and essence of any differentiation, development, or realiza-
tion that takes place, must be contained in the universality. So when
Hegel later calls Kant’s principle of autonomy or duty “empty,” what
he means is that it fails to contain this “totality,” or the beginning and
essence of its differentiation, development, and realization.
Is Hegel’s criticism of Kant, on this point, justified? To see whether it
is fully justified, one would have to look at the full development of Kant’s
ethical system, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique
of Practical Reason, and the Metaphysics of Morals itself, and see how it
compares with the development of ethics that Hegel presents in his
Philosophy of Spirit and his Philosophy of Right (where Hegel’s development
presumably contains the “totality,” and so forth, that Hegel thinks is
missing from Kant’s development). Taken as a whole, this is obviously
too large a task to undertake here. I have already argued in 2.7, however,
that the development of Kant’s ethical system is incomplete in one key
respect – namely, that Kant fails to demonstrate that the only way to
be fully autonomous is to care about the freedom and autonomy of
others as well as of oneself; and thus Kant fails to demonstrate that
the fundamental principle of his ethics in fact generates an ethics. At
this point in our study of the Science of Logic, where Hegel’s response
to egoism has not yet become explicit, it remains to be seen whether
Hegel’s system will do better than Kant’s does, in this respect. Hegel’s
response to egoism emerges, in stages, in the second and third parts
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 233

of the Doctrine of the Concept (“Objectivity” and the “Idea”), and we

will be studying it in the latter part of this chapter. We will discover
there whether the “Concept” that Hegel is introducing here will in
fact develop into a structured relationship between individuals, such as
might eventually qualify as an ethics. If it does develop into such a
relationship, and if my criticism in 2.7 of Kant’s efforts to do the same
thing is correct, then at least in this one very important respect, Hegel’s
“principle” does indeed “contain the beginning and the essence of” an
ethical realization, whereas Kant’s does not.

.. The Concept and the Will (Philosophy of Right, Introduction)

We should also return here to the issue of the “alien”-ness or enslave-
ment that the young Hegel had identified in Kant’s conception of the
will (2.2), and how Hegel in his maturity proposes to preserve some-
thing like Kant’s idea of a “higher standard” that goes beyond the
drives or inclinations, as such (so that it will be true that “knowledge of
the will first gained a firm foundation and point of departure in the
philosophy of Kant, through the thought of its infinite autonomy”
[PR §135R]), but without subjecting the drives or inclinations to an
“alien” or enslaving authority. Hegel’s solution to this problem was al-
ready implicit, of course, in true infinity, in which the infinite was to be
understood as the self-transcendence of the finite, and thus not as some-
thing alien to the finite – a “power outside it” – which would be imposed
upon it. This solution is restated in the Concept when the latter’s mo-
ments are described as “totalities,” each of which embodies the whole
system of which they are moments, so that the particular, for example,
itself embodies the universal, and the latter’s “power” over it (5.2) is
not alien to it, but instead is (in one important sense) its own power.
Hegel restates this whole conception, as applied to the will, in §§5–7
of the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right. §5 describes the will’s
(“abstract”) universality: the “absolute possibility of abstracting from ev-
ery determination in which I find myself, the flight from every content
as a limitation.” §6 describes its particularity: “the finitude or particular-
ization of the ‘I,’” in which “‘I’ steps into determinate being [Dasein] in
general.” And §7 describes its singularity [Einzelheit], as

the self-determination of the ‘I,’ in that it posits itself as the negative of

itself, that is, as determinate and limited, and at the same time remains
with itself [bei sich], that is, in its identity with itself and universality.
(PR §7; emphases altered)
234 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

That is, the will’s singularity combines – is the “identity” of – determi-

nateness (particularity) and universality; its universality is “with itself”
in “the negative of itself” (in “its other,” in the famous formula). Hegel
refers his readers back to the Encyclopedia Logic’s discussion of singular-
ity (EL §§163–165) for an explanation of how this is possible. The gist
of this explanation, again, is that universality and particularity must be
understood as “totalities,” so that rather than being alien or indifferent
to each other, “each of [the Concept’s] moments is the whole that [the
Concept] is, and is posited as an undivided unity with it” (EL §160; cf.
EL §164 and WL 6:296–299/GW 12:49–51/618–621). In terms of the
will, or practical decision-making, we could say: The “abstract” domain
of reason and the “particular” domain of desires and inclinations must
each be understood as containing the other – whereas, on the other
hand, they must also be understood as different and opposed to each
other. We are familiar with this pattern from true infinity: The infinite
goes beyond the finite as such, and thus is different from and opposed to
it; on the other hand, the infinite is the self-transcendence of the finite,
and in that sense it is identical with the finite.
In the PR Introduction, Hegel goes on to argue that an arbitrary will
[Willkür] that does “what it wants” [was man wolle] is not free because
“it does not yet have itself as its content and end,” but instead pursues
something that is “given to it” from outside (PR §15R). It must have
itself as its “content and end” – we may interpret – in order to be fully
“with itself,” in accordance with §7. The “arbitrariness” that fails to have
itself as its content and end could be identified with either or both of
the non-“rationalist” conceptions of freedom and responsibility that I
described in 2.4 – namely, voluntarism and naturalist compatibilism –
insofar as neither of those conceptions shows how the person promotes
something, in her action, that is distinct from what is “given to her”
from outside of her: Neither shows how the person’s will has “itself as
its content and end.” Voluntarism identifies nothing, other than the
absence of external causation, that represents the agent herself; and
naturalism identifies the agent with character traits which (we might
think) she might wish to change, and some of which may produce
actions that it seems she should not be held responsible for. So neither
conception seems to identify something properly “internal to” the agent
that we could identify with her freedom. This is why Hegel, like Kant,
seeks to identify a kind of rational functioning that – unlike the mere
absence of external causation, or the simple presence of desires or
character traits – could be the agent’s way of being engaged or at work in
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 235

(or at least capable of being engaged or at work in) her action. To have
something like this will be for the will to have “itself,” and not just what
it wants, as its content and end.
To characterize this rational functioning, Hegel describes in some
detail how conflicting drives and inclinations, which have no “yardstick
within” themselves showing how they should be combined (§17), can
be “judged” as good or bad, or “purified” into a “rational system” or
a “sum total of satisfaction” (§18–20) – but the “truth” behind this
process, he says, is simply that the will must have “universality, or itself
as infinite form, as its content, object, and end” (§21): That is, that
in order to exist, as a (free) will, it must go beyond all the particular
drives and inclinations (and likewise, one might add, particular char-
acter traits), by unifying them in a way in which they themselves cannot
unify themselves.10 Hegel goes on to say that this sort of will is “truly
infinite, because its object is itself, and therefore not something which
it sees as other or as a limitation” (§22); and its universality is “concrete,”
rather than “abstract” (§24R).
What the PR Introduction does not explain is (1) why a free will (or,
for that matter, the “realm of Spirit” [PR §4]) needs to exist, at all, and
(2) how the particular drives and inclinations can cease to function as
an “other,” for the will, so that it can in fact have “itself,” rather than
them, as its “object” (thus making its universality “concrete” rather than
abstract). For (1), Hegel refers the reader (PR §4R) to EG §§440–482,
which we’ll examine in Chapter 6, and for (2), he refers (PR §24R)
to EL §§168–179 on “the various determinations of universality.” For
both (1) and (2), however, I would suggest that the really indispens-
able background will be found in the argument to true infinity, in the
“Quality” chapter of WL. A free will must exist because the finite must
go beyond itself in order to be real – so it must achieve freedom, and
to do so, it must (ultimately) embody a will. The arguments to the Con-
cept, to Spirit, and to the will as an aspect of Spirit, spell out what is
implicit in the argument to true infinity. And the reason why the partic-
ular drives and inclinations can cease to function as an “other,” for the
will – the sense in which the drives and inclinations can “originate in the
will’s rationality” (the remarkable unexplained statement from PR §11

10 Parallels to Hegel’s account, here, of how the will or the self emerges in the form of
systematic thinking about how to reconcile and unify one’s desires can be found in
Plato’s account of the rational part of the soul in Republic Book iv and vi–vii, and in
Aristotle’s account of the human “function,” or ergon, in Nicomachean Ethics i–iii.
236 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

that I quoted in 2.2) – is, once again, that the will is a necessary element
in the full realization (through freedom) of everything that is finite,
including these drives and inclinations (a realization that will emerge
as “rationality” when it becomes the “Idea,” later in the Doctrine of
the Concept). Hegel avoids subjecting the drives or inclinations to an
“alien” or enslaving authority by arguing that the finite must go beyond
itself – in the “ought,” freedom, the Concept, Spirit, and the will – in
order to be fully real, and thus the “universal” to which the drives and
inclinations are subject is the drives and inclinations themselves, in their full
reality. So when the will has “itself” as its “object,” it likewise has the
drives and inclinations, in their full reality, as its object; they are not
an “other or a limitation” for it, because, as their self-transcendence,
it is them. Rather than setting up the will’s rational functioning as
an additional content and end for itself, as Kant (in effect) does and
thus creates the dualism of inclination versus reason that leads to the
alien-ness or slavery (of the former to the latter) to which the young
Hegel objected, Hegel understands the will’s rational functioning as the
self-transcendence and the realization of inclination (and of everything
else that’s finite), so that there is (ultimately) no conflict between rea-
son and inclination, and no possibility of one of them being alien to or
enslaving the other.11
With regard to the problem of how to identify an aspect of the per-
son through which she herself can be engaged or at work in her actions
(rather than merely being the absence of external causes, or the pres-
ence of possibily problematic character traits), Hegel’s conception not
only identifies such an aspect – in the process of “judgment,” “purifi-
cation,” “sum total,” and so forth – but makes it the core of the per-
son’s reality, superior (in this way) to the features, such as bodies or
character traits, that are ascribed to persons by “common sense.” This
way of enabling the agent to be engaged or at work in her action may
seem a bit grandiose, by comparison with the sorts of strategies that
voluntarism, naturalism, and Kant feel that they have available to them.
None of these three well-known approaches takes the liberty of ques-
tioning the reality of the finite as such; in that sense, they all work within
the framework of common sense. Neither, on the other hand, do they
seem to accomplish what Hegel’s approach accomplishes: to enable the

11 An important parallel to this dissolution (by Hegel) of the conflict between reason and
inclination might be seen in Plato’s account, in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium, of
the ascent of desire or eros from individual bodies to the Form of the Good.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 237

agent to be at work in her action in a way that doesn’t conflict, as nat-

uralism seems to, with widely shared views about which actions we are
responsible for and which we aren’t, and that, unlike Kant, posits only
one (systematically unified) reality, rather than two.

.. From the Concept (“Subjectivity”) to Objectivity

At the end of Hegel’s discussion of “singularity,” a surprising turning
takes place, one that is reminiscent of the turning in which deter-
mining reflection was said to have “gotten outside itself . . . lost in the
negation” (WL 6:34/GW 11:257,4–6/407; see 4.8), and the turning in
which true infinity as being-for-self “collapsed into the undifferentiat-
edness which is immediacy or being” (WL 5: 182/GW 21:151–152/163;
see 3.24). Hegel tells us that singularity is “not only the Concept’s return
into itself but also, immediately, its loss” (WL 6:299/GW 12:51,6/621;
emphasis added). The “abstraction” that he has just been describing as
the “wrong way, [which] strays from the path of the Concept and for-
sakes the truth” (WL 6:296–297/GW 12:49,30–32/619), he now says is
nevertheless “the soul of singularity” (WL 6:299/GW 12:51/621). This
is because abstraction “determines the Concept according to its ideal
moment of being as something immediate. Thus, the singular is a qual-
itative One or [a] This” (ibid.). That is, if we focus on the aspect of
the Concept that is articulated in the Logic’s chapter on Quality or in
its account of Reflection – which, like all the other intervening parts
of the Logic, are “ideal moments” of the Concept, insofar as the Con-
cept supersedes them – then the proper way to describe that aspect is
by means of the merely classificatory concepts (“Ones” and what they
“have in common,” or “Thises” and their “essential relation” to one
another) that Hegel categorizes as “abstraction.” Since the Concept
hasn’t yet developed its own way of thinking of determinacy, these are
the available ways of thinking of it; but the result of doing so is that the
Concept is “lost,” since these forms of determinacy don’t exhibit the
unity with the universal that the Concept requires (WL 6:300–301/GW
12:51–52/621–622). To this extent, “abstraction,” including the kind
of sheer multiplicity that was postulated by “atomism” (on which, see
3.25–3.26), constitutes the actual practice of “singularity,” and in that
sense, its “soul.”
What is needed, then, is to trace the reestablishment of the Concept’s
“totality,” out of this self-loss. Hegel begins this process, which is com-
pleted in the Idea, with his account of Urteil (“Judgment,” or literally:
238 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“original division”) and Schluss (“Syllogism”). He makes it clear that

he doesn’t mean these terms primarily to describe mental operations.
Rather, he means them primarily to describe structures of reality. (I will
capitalize them, like “Concept,” as a reminder of this special meaning.)
In Judgment, two “independent totalities” – the “subject” and “predi-
cate” of the traditional “judgment” – are divided from one another and
then united. Hegel considers ways of doing this that are characteristic
of being (the Judgment of determinate being), of essence (Judgments
of reflection and of necessity), and of the Concept itself. In the most de-
veloped form of Judgment that he considers, the apodictic Judgment,
subject and predicate are united by way of an intervening specification:
“The house constituted in such and such a way is good” (WL 6: 349/
GW 12:87,31/661). This intervening specification makes the Judgment
self-contained in the sense that it gives a reason for it, so that one needn’t
look outside it for its justification. Having this intervening specifica-
tion, however, converts Judgment into the new category of “Syllogism,”
in which starting point and ending point are connected by way of an
intervening term, the “middle term,” that justifies moving from the
one to the other. Having such an intervening term, Syllogism is the
“restoration of the Concept in the Judgment,” in that “the Concept
determinations are like the extremes of the Judgment, but at the same
time their determinate unity is posited” (WL 6:351/GW 12:90/664),
through the middle term.
“Everything that is rational,” Hegel says, “is a Syllogism” (WL 6:256/
GW 12:90,18/664), because everything that is rational embodies its own
reasons, or justifies itself. Here, of course, what “rational” describes is
not a sequence of argument, as such, but the sort of structure of reality
that’s addressed by the faculty of “reason” that’s associated with the
Concept (as addressing the issue of what is being, what is reality, or what
is ‘one,’ as I explained in 5.3 and 5.5). Such a structure has to embody
its own reasons or justify itself in order to qualify as a “totality,” in which
the universal and the determinate (particular, singular) refer to each
other. They refer to each other by embodying the sort of mediation-by-
reasons that is epitomized in the Syllogism.
However, even the Syllogism does not fully achieve this result,
because in it there is still a difference between what mediates be-
tween the extremes, and the extremes themselves (WL 6:400/
GW 12:125,9/703,top). Such an unresolved difference is no different, at
bottom, from the “loss” of the Concept – the unexplained gap between
universal and particular – with which the whole discussion of Judgment
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 239

and Syllogism began. It is an absence of “totality.” Hegel’s analysis

of types of Syllogism, however (paralleling his analysis of types of
Judgment), culminates in a Syllogism – the “disjunctive Syllogism” –
in which what mediates between the extremes is identical with them:
A is either B or C or D.
But A is B.
Therefore A is neither C nor D.

Here, A’s universality (“either B or C or D”) is mediated with its singu-

larity (“neither C nor D”) by A itself – the “middle term” is A – so that
the mediator is identical with the mediated.

.. From Objectivity to the “Idea”

This result, which Hegel describes as “no longer a Syllogism” (WL
6:399/ GW 12:124,23/702), creates, he says, “objectivity,” which is “a
being that is . . . the Concept that has produced itself out of, and in,
its otherness [:] a matter [Sache] that is in and for itself” (WL 6:401/
GW 12:126,17–21/704). Judgment and Syllogism were articulations of
the Concept’s otherness, insofar as they were the Concept’s “loss” of it-
self (WL 6:299/GW 12:51,6/621; see 5.8, beginning). But through the
development of Judgment and Syllogism, “objectivity” has overcome
the “abstraction” through which that loss occurred, and has regained
the Concept’s totality (though as yet without any internal articulation).
As for the “matter [Sache] that is in and for itself”: “matter” (Sache) was in-
troduced, in the Doctrine of Essence, as the “absolutely unconditioned”
(WL 6:119/GW 11:319/474–475), which went over into “existence.”
The “in-and-for-itself” (see 4.6) was the epitome of being, its starting
point and upshot combined. So a Sache (“matter”) that is in and for itself
epitomizes being, as such, and is absolutely unconditioned existence.
In sum, it is self-contained: It has no internal division of the sort that
subjectivity suffered from (in the gap between universality and determi-
nateness, subject and predicate, or mediator and mediated). Like be-
ing, determinate being, existence, actuality, substantiality, and abstract
universality, objectivity is a kind of “immediacy”; this kind, however, is
“the immediacy to which the Concept determines itself by superseding
its abstractness and mediation” (WL 6:406/GW 12:130, 5–7/708).
Hegel immediately likens this transition to self-contained “objectiv-
ity” to the transition, in St. Anselm’s “ontological argument,” to the ex-
istence of God. The ontological argument proceeds from the concept
240 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

of God to the existence of God; similarly, the transition to objectivity

proceeds from the Concept to the Concept’s “immediacy,” as an abso-
lutely unconditioned, and self-sufficient, existence. Remembering the
theological attributes that Hegel assigned to the Concept itself – its
freedom, love, and blessedness (5.2) – we may wonder why “objectivity”
is celebrated as the arrival of God himself (as it were). Did the Concept
not “exist”? Like everything else in the Logic, the Concept supersedes
and thus includes being, and like everything subsequent to the second
section of Essence, it supersedes and includes existence. But it needs a
kind of immediacy that, unlike mere existence, is appropriate to itself,
and this it finds in objectivity. The new wrinkle, in “objectivity,” is the
combination of unconditioned existence and self-sufficiency (“in-and-
for-itself”-ness). The Concept needed to determine itself, and in that way
it was not self-sufficient (because not fully “in itself”). Objectivity, on
the other hand, is fully determinate, and in that way it is self-sufficient.
In proceeding from the Concept to objectivity, we have proceeded (in
effect) from a conception of God as needing to objectivize himself in
determinate beings, to a conception of God as self-sufficient and free of
all need. It is not difficult to see how the latter conception corresponds
to an important thread in traditional thinking about God, and thus
how arriving at it can suggest a parallel to the ontological argument
for “God’s” existence, even though earlier phases of Hegel’s discussion
also have strong theological connotations, and later phases – in partic-
ular, Absolute Spirit – will be described by him as representing the most
adequate conception of God.
In spite of its self-sufficiency, objectivity too develops, from “mech-
anism” through “chemism” to “teleology.” It does so because the Con-
cept needs to produce not only self-sufficiency but also “the free being-
for-self of its subjectivity” (WL 6:408/GW 12:131,5/710). The Concept
has to produce this “free being-for-self of its subjectivity” in order to
be truly “(in and) for itself.” Though Hegel never makes it completely
explicit (probably because he thinks it’s obvious), this connection is
crucial, because his entire discussion of “objectivity” hinges on it. The
formula of “in and for itself,” which Hegel identified (as “being-in-and-
for-self”) with Essence in his introduction to the Doctrine of Essence
(WL 6:14/GW 11:242,24–25/ 390), is meant, as I explained in 4.6, to
sum up the upshot of the Doctrine of Being, by combining what was true
in being-in-itself (namely, indifference to all determination), with what
was true in being-for-self, or the project of self-determination that was
embodied in negativity and true infinity. The formula recurs as part of
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 241

the introduction of the Concept, where Hegel says that “being-in-and-

for-itself has found . . . in the Concept a determinate being [Dasein] that
is in keeping with itself and true” (WL 6:270/GW 12:29,17–18/596).
So the Concept, as the unity of being and essence, is the determinate
being that is in keeping with being-in-and-for-self. This means that it has
to be in keeping both with being-in-itself and with being-for-itself. But
Objectivity, so far, does not have the character of being-for-self; it does
not exhibit self-determination. So Hegel will examine the content of
Mechanism, Chemism, and Teleology for its potential to constitute this
self-determination. In doing so, he will not be examining mechanism
and chemistry and technology (“external teleology”), as we might find
them laid out in textbooks of the physical sciences and engineering,
to see whether their manifest content requires us to interpret them in
terms of inner teleology or free self-determination. Rather, he will be
looking to see whether we can interpret them in those ways, since it’s
only if they can be interpreted in those ways that they can constitute
the domain of Objectivity as he has defined it and arrived at it, namely,
as a “matter [Sache] that is in and for itself” (WL 6:401/GW 12:126,
17–21/704).
So Hegel sketches ways in which the mechanical interaction of mate-
rial objects in, for example, solar systems, and the chemical interaction
of substances, can be increasingly centered or systematically integrated, so
that that the behavior of items within these systems can be understood
by reference to the center or to the system as a whole, rather than solely
in terms of “thrust and pressure” (WL 6:423/GW 12:143,33/722). To
the Newtonian account of orbital motion, which ascribes no special im-
portance to the “center,” as such, Hegel objects that its notion of infinite
motion in a straight line, in the absence of resistance, is “an empty ab-
straction,” because the power of resistance is derived only from “unity
with the center” (WL 6:423–424/GW 12:143,11–19/722). But he ac-
knowledges at the same time that this “unity . . . remains only an ought,
because the externality of the objects, which is still also posited, does
not correspond to that unity” (WL 6:423/GW 12:143,3–6/722). How
does this “ought” enter into the physical world? It enters in insofar as
the unity of the central body and the objects is “their Concept, which is
in and for itself” (WL 6:423/GW 12:143,4/722; emphasis added). That
is, it enters in insofar as we have good reason, deriving from the argu-
ments for true infinity and for the Concept (as the latest form of true
infinity), to look for centeredness in the world as an elementary form
of being in and (especially) for itself.
242 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel describes Mechanism in general as a “contradiction” be-

tween, on the one hand, “the objects’ perfect indifference towards
each other,” and on the other hand “the identity of their determi-
nation” (WL 6:413/GW 12:136,22–25/714). They are indifferent to
each other in that there is supposedly no logical connection between
them, but they are “identical in their determination” because “a princi-
ple of self-determination is nowhere to be found” in them (WL 6:412/
GW 12:135,34/713; emphasis added), so that there is nothing to distin-
guish those that are determining from those that are determined. But
that there should be self-determination, and distinctions based upon it,
is not a feature of “mechanism” as it’s normally understood. It is only
a feature of Mechanism as an interpretation of the Objectivity that is
“a matter that is in and for itself,” and so must be self-determining. So,
like his critiques of “external reflection” and of “diversity,” in Essence,
Hegel’s critique of Mechanism depends upon the result – in the form
of “being in and for itself” – of his initial critique of Being.
“Chemism” differs from Mechanism in that in the former, the object
is not indifferent to its determination; instead, for “chemistic” objects
(which include meteorological and sexual phenomena, and partners in
love and friendship, as well as what we think of as chemicals), their de-
termination and thus their relation to others enter very much into their
nature (WL 6:429/GW 12:148–149/727). However, even in Chemism,
the object still has an aspect of immediate self-standingness and ex-
ternality (WL 6:434/GW 12:152,11–12/731), which prevents it from
being fully “for itself” or self-determining. Mechanism and Chemism
are only “finite, conditioned” processes (EL §202A). An “end” (Zweck;
that is, telos, “end” in the sense of “purpose”), on the other hand, “is the
Concept that has entered into free existence and is-for-itself, by means
of the negation of immediate objectivity” (EL §204). It is “for itself” in
the sense that what it pursues is not dictated by something other than
itself, and it negates immediate objectivity by using it as its means. By
entering “free existence,” it partakes of the freedom that is the Concept.
Why should we regard an “end,” in this sense, as itself something
objective? Hegel praises Aristotle for identifying life as “inner teleology,”
and praises Kant for resuscitating this idea, in his Critique of Judgment
(WL 6:440/GW 12:157/737; EL §204R), but in line with his praise of
Aristotle, Hegel criticizes Kant for treating this teleology as a mere “sub-
jective maxim,” which one can use on a “proper occasion” but which one
should not regard as objectively required (WL 6:442–3/GW 12:158,18–
23/738–9, referring to KU Ak. 387). The end relation, Hegel says,
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 243

is not . . . a “reflective” judging that considers external objects according

to a unity only “as if” an intelligence had given this unity “for the con-
venience of our cognitive faculty”; on the contrary, it is the truth which
is-in-and-for-itself and which judges [urteilt: divides] objectively and de-
termines external objectivity absolutely. [It is thus] the syllogism of the
self-subsistent free Concept, which closes [zusammenschliesst] itself with
itself through objectivity.
(WL 6: 444/GW 12:159,21–30/739)

This is, essentially, the conclusion of “Objectivity”: that the truth that
is in-and-for-itself – which Hegel will call the “Idea” – divides (ur-teilt)
itself into the Concept and objectivity, so that the two are “built to go
together,” and the presence of inner teleology in objects manifests this
connection.
What is the argument for this conclusion? Here again, I have to agree
with Charles Taylor that Hegel is “sure of [this] ascending transition
because he is already sure of it” (Hegel, p. 294), finding in the physical
world traces of what he thinks he is bound to find there; and I have to
add, once again, that I think he is justified in doing so by his argument, in
the Doctrine of Being, for true infinity. Since objects, merely as such, are
finite, and since finitude, according to the argument for true infinity,
is unreal, objects possess reality through their transcending themselves
into something infinite or “for-itself,” which at this stage of the discus-
sion is the Concept. So whatever traces of such self-transcendence Hegel
can find in the objective world, he can legitimately take (assuming they
are consistent with one another) to be real. The “end relation” is such
a trace, insofar as it is a process in which finite things serve a purpose
that transcends their finitude. That higher purpose being to achieve
“reality” or (equivalently) to manifest the Concept.

.. The “Idea,” Reason, and Actuality

Hegel chose the word “Idea” as his title for “the absolute unity of Con-
cept and objectivity” (EL §213) because Kant had “reclaimed the expres-
sion ‘Idea’ for concepts of reason” (WL 6:462/GW 12:173,11/755). In
doing this, Kant was intentionally following Plato, for whom, Kant says,
“ideas are archetypes of the things themselves, and not, in the manner of
the categories, merely keys to possible experience” (Critique of Pure Rea-
son A313/B370). So Kant reserved the term “Idea” for concepts of God,
freedom, the world as a whole, and the soul, which go beyond possible
244 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

experience and the categories, and consequently (Kant thinks) can ap-
propriately be used only in connection with practical, moral thinking –
in the domain of moral “faith,” as Kant puts it (Critique of Pure Reason B
xxx) – and not in connection with theory or knowledge.
Hegel, however, thinks that he has shown, through the arguments
that we have been analyzing, that in order merely to have theoretical
knowledge of finite, natural qualities and things, one must ultimately
think of them as transcending themselves via true infinity, the free Con-
cept, and the Concept’s objectification in things like the “end.” Thus,
one will not be able to distinguish between a realm of theory, in which
one knows only “appearances,” and a realm of practice, in which one
thinks in terms of God, freedom, and so on. Rather, one will think in
terms of a single reality structured by the Concept, a reality of which existence and
action, fact and value, mechanism and teleology, are all genuine aspects, none
of which can be segregated into a domain of “theory” or a domain of “practice,”
a domain of “knowledge” or a domain of “faith.” Again in honor of Plato,
and also in honor of Aristotle (whose “form” is the same Greek word,
eidos, as Plato’s “Idea” or “Form”), Hegel proposes to call this ultimate
reality the “Idea.” But Hegel follows Aristotle rather than Plato (at least
as Aristotle interpreted Plato) on the question of whether this ultimate
reality could subsist without being objectified. For in Hegel’s version,
it is necessarily objectified, as we saw in the previous section (5.9).
Naturally, this piece of terminology, the “Idea,” has a lot to do
with Hegel’s description of his philosophy as a kind of “idealism”
(compare 3.16). In view of the misunderstandings to which Hegel’s
“idealism” has been subject, it would have been helpful if he could have
called the Idea “form,” in honor of Aristotle in particular, with whom
he shares the notion that concepts are necessarily embodied. Then
his philosophy could have been called “formism,” and we could have
scratched our heads over what that could possibly mean, but at least
we wouldn’t have confused it with the subjective idealism of Bishop
Berkeley. However, since Hegel translated both Plato’s eidos (which we
translate as “Idea” or “Form”) and Aristotle’s eidos (which we translate
as “form”) by the same German word, “Idee,” he had no convenient way
of signaling his Aristotelian preference by his choice of terminology.
Understanding this linguistic situation makes it easier to forgive Hegel
for the cognitive dissonance that we experience in trying to think of his
“Idea” as something that is, as he insists, fully embodied and objective,
as well as fully conceptual and subjective.
Aristotle’s doctrine that concepts are necessarily embodied, that
“form” is necessarily “enmattered,” is almost as fundamental, for Hegel,
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 245

as his own doctrines that finitude is unreal and that infinity is as the
self-transcendence of the finite. Indeed, they may be at bottom the same
doctrine for him, if, as I suggested in the previous section, his deepest
reason for believing that the Concept must be “objective” (which is his
way of stating Aristotle’s doctrine that concepts are necessarily embod-
ied) is that the infinite must be the self-transcendence of the finite.12
Reasonably enough – assuming that one grants him his “Idea” –
Hegel associates it both with truth, in the strongest sense of that word,
which I introduced in 5.5 (the “unity of the Concept and objectivity”
that, as he says in EL §213, makes a “true soldier” or a “true work
of art” “true”), and with reason. He identifies it with reason almost as
a matter of definition – the Idea, he says, “is the true, philosophical
meaning of reason” (EL §214). Because the Idea is self-sufficient and
in-and-for-itself, Concept and Object, and thus fully self-explanatory
or self-justifying, it leaves no room for reasons that would be outside
it, and so it is fully rational. Here, then, we can finally see why Hegel
felt justified in making his famous statements, in the Preface to the
Philosophy of Right, that the actual is rational and the rational is actual
(which I discussed previously in 4.15). If actuality can only properly
be understood in terms of the Concept, and if that Concept, for the
reasons that I have just given, necessarily embodies itself in something
that one can appropriately call “rational,” then the actual, clearly, must
be rational, and the rational likewise (via that same embodiment) must
be actual.
The Idea’s relation to reason no doubt explains its relation to “truth,”
as well, since insofar as something embodies reasons, it appears to be
truer (to what it essentially is/should be) than something that is less ra-
tional, more arbitrary. We can interpret this ontological kind of “truth,”
on which Hegel lays great emphasis in contrast to the “truth” of factual

12 For Aristotle’s general doctrine of form and matter, see Physics Books I and II. (Aris-
totle seems to make one very controversial exception to his rule that form must be
enmattered, in De Anima III 5 [the “productive intellect”].) Hegel’s critique of the
form/matter and form/content distinctions, and his account of “actuality,” in the Doc-
trine of Essence, don’t yield all that he values in Aristotle, since he takes Aristotle’s
account of the soul to be the most important account of “spirit” (and thus, in effect,
of the Concept) prior to his own (EG §378). On Hegel’s way of appropriating Aristo-
tle, see Alfredo Ferrarrin’s rich treatment, Hegel and Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001); Michael Wolff, Das Körper-Seele-Problem. Kommentar zu Hegel, En-
zyklopädie (1830) §389 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1992); and Willem A. deVries,
Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Unfortunately,
these writers don’t analyze Hegel’s Doctrine of Being in any detail, and consequently
they don’t construct the connection between Hegel’s conception of true infinity and
his appropriation of Aristotle that I suggest here.
246 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

statements, as the latest incarnation of the “reality” that I have suggested

he has been pursuing since the beginning of “Determinate Being”
(see 3.4, 3.16). Here again, Hegel is saying, in effect, that what has
the greatest claim to “reality,” or to what he now calls “truth,” or (as we
could say) to true being, is something that is both (1) objective and (2)
fully determined by reasons (the Concept). Actuality was a first approx-
imation to this “truth” – hence the weight that Hegel is prepared to lay
on it in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right – but its rationality is fully
articulated and manifest only via the Concept, in the Idea.

.. Can Metaphysics, Like This, Be Rationally Defended?

Is the sort of metaphysics that Hegel is now engaging in, with the “end re-
lation” and the Idea, defensible in our supposedly “post-metaphysical”
age? I hope that my detailed reconstruction of his argument, in this
chapter and the two previous ones, has discouraged readers from as-
suming that nothing “metaphysical” can be rationally defensible. Does
Hegel’s metaphysics transgress limits for which Kant, the great drawer
of the line against indefensible metaphysics, has given good arguments?
If the essence of Kantian “Critical” thinking is the doctrine that
knowledge, as such, must involve sense-experience (together, of course,
with the Categories), then Hegel’s metaphysics might as well be called
“pre-Critical,” or “intentionally anti-Critical.” For Hegel is clearly claim-
ing knowledge that does not, in any direct way, involve sense-experience.
If, on the other hand, the essence of “Critical” thinking is that it does
not accept any concept or doctrine – including the Kantian doctrine
that I just mentioned – as an unexamined “given,” but instead subjects
it to “the test of free and public examination” (Critique of Pure Reason
A xii, note), then Hegel’s train of thought, as I have described it in
this chapter and the previous one, seems to be thoroughly Critical.
To proscribe it simply because it is also “metaphysical” would, clearly,
be dogmatic.13 The way to determine whether this particular form of
metaphysics is rationally defensible must be to examine the arguments

13 In his extended early critique of Kant in Faith and Knowledge (1802) (TWA 2: 287–
433/FK 53–191), Hegel repeatedly measured Kant against the standard of the Idea,
as Hegel conceived of it, and found Kant wanting – without, for his part, giving more
than a gnomic defense of this Idea. As Paul Guyer points out in his “Thought and
Being: Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy,” in F. Beiser, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 171–210, this
seems like a dogmatic procedure, on Hegel’s part. In light of the Science of Logic (1812),
however – which seems, by spelling out an undogmatic argument for the Idea, to fulfil
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 247

by which Hegel arrives at it, rather than to apply to it a standard of ra-

tional acceptability that Hegel, himself, gives reasons for questioning.
Those reasons being, once again, Hegel’s argument for the contradic-
toriness of finitude: If finite being doesn’t have its quality by virtue of
itself, and consequently it is more real to the extent that it transcends
itself, then the understanding of reality cannot be based primarily on fi-
nite evidence such as sensations (though it must certainly take account
of them).14 Reason will have to use other means – like those that I have
laid out in the previous two chapters and the present one – to track
the true reality that transcends finitude. The reality that reason identi-
fies will be found, very much, in sensations, insofar as this reality is the
self-transcendence of the finite, rather than a “power existing outside it”
(WL 5: 160/GW 21:133,39/145–146). But those sensations, as such,
will not establish its reality, since when they are taken as sensations they
are merely finite.

.. The Idea, the “Cunning” of Reason, and “God”

In his discussion of the end relation, Hegel speaks both of “violence”
and of the “cunning of reason” (WL 6:452/GW 12:165–166/746) – a
phrase that he famously uses in his Philosophy of History lectures – as
ways in which the “end” gets its way. It is easy to interpret this sort of
language, if one wishes to, in the light of the singleness of “the Concept,”
as Hegel habitually speaks of it, and to imagine a solitary grey-bearded
World-Spirit imposing his will, by some kind of remote control, upon
finite things. Hegel invites this sort of interpretation when he says, in
the lecture cited in EL §209A, that:

Divine Providence behaves with absolute cunning. God lets men, who
have their particular passions and interests, do as they please, and what
results is the accomplishment of his intentions, which are something
other than those whom he employs were directly concerned about.

Hegel warns us elsewhere, though, in highly visible passages, that reli-

gious “representations” (Vorstellungen) such as he is using in this quota-
tion don’t translate directly into philosophical terminology (EL §§1,2).
That is, we can’t assume that because in religious talk, “God” is described

the implicit “promissory notes” that Hegel issues in Faith and Knowledge – his earlier
apparent dogmatism is perhaps excusable.
14 Hegel develops this argument about knowledge at length in PhG, Chapters 1–5.
248 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

as an individual who has intentions, therefore the Concept or the Idea

or Absolute Spirit is an individual, and has intentions. “The singularity
of the Concept,” Hegel says, is “strictly what is effective, . . . what pro-
duces itself” – no talk of “intentions,” so far, here – and this “singu-
larity,” Hegel adds, “is not to be taken in the sense of merely immediate
singularity – as when we speak of single things, or human beings, and so
on; that determination of singularity is found only in connection with
Judgment” (Urteil, “division”) (EL §163R; emphasis added). “The stand-
point of Judgment is finitude” (EL §168), Hegel says, whereas the Con-
cept itself is “infinite, creative form” (EL §160A). So we shouldn’t think
of the Concept as an individual thing, over against other individual
things. This is, of course, something that is already clear from Hegel’s
doctrine that true infinity (the ancestor of the Concept), rather than be-
ing something (an individual thing) with an identity like those of finite
things but differing from them in that it is infinite, is only through finite
things’ self-transcendence (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,39–2/145–146). De-
pending on finite things in that way (as they, for their part, depend upon
it for their full reality), true infinity cannot be thought of as distinct from
finite things in the way that they are distinct from each other. This being
the case, it is clear that we can’t take Hegel’s religious talk about God
and God’s intentions as implying that “he” (“God”) exists over against
finite things and has intentions for them in the way that we exist over
against, and have intentions for, the things that we control. When he
speaks of the “cunning of reason,” Hegel undoubtedly does intend to
tell us that people whose passions and interests are not aligned with
the transcendence that can be achieved by rational freedom, will ac-
complish things that they don’t intend. Aspects of their actions will pay
unintended tribute to the freedom that they aren’t intentionally pur-
suing. But from this important fact it does not follow, nor can Hegel
(consistently with his doctrine of true infinity) assert, that there is a di-
vine mind or person, separate from finite things, that directs what they
accomplish.15 Which, as I suggested in 3.17, does not prevent it from

15 When Hegel discusses divine personhood, in his account of the Trinity, he counts
“nature” as the “Son” – the “other I” of God the Father – in which the Father even-
tually “returns to unity with himself” as the Holy Spirit (Geist) (EG §381A, p. 22/12).
In this way, Trinitarian “personhood” serves to unite God with finite nature, including
humans, rather than to contrast God, as one person, with other (human) persons. And
at the same time, the distinction between the first two divine “persons” serves to distin-
guish Hegel’s doctrine from pantheism, which is the traditional alternative to orthodox
theism’s way of relating God to finite nature.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 249

being the case that Hegel is perfectly serious, and indeed is justified,
in his claim that his philosophy captures something that is true in tra-
ditional theistic religion that is not adequately captured by the familiar
varieties of atheist humanism, so that rather than being a smokescreen,
his use of religious language is a legitimate way of expressing what he
takes to be a genuine and important truth. We just need to interpret
that use in the light of his Logical analysis.

.. The Idea as Life

The Idea in its “immediate” form, Hegel says, is “life.” Life is Idea
because it combines “soul” with body or objectivity (EL §216). Since
by “soul” Hegel means, as in Aristotle’s biological concept of “soul”
(psuche), the form whose presence in the creature makes it alive, and
which Hegel identifies with the Concept, the combination of soul with
body is a combination of Concept with objectivity, and thus it is the Idea.
Hegel makes it clear at the end of EL §216 that by speaking of “soul,”
here, he does not intend – any more than Aristotle did – to suggest that
there is a constituent part in any living thing that can exist separately
from its body.16 “Soul,” like other kinds of Aristotelian “form,” exists,
in general, only in matter.
I don’t think Hegel means to imply, here, that it makes no sense at all
to locate the Concept in non-living things. His accounts of Mechanism,
Chemism, and the “end” found a Conceptual aspect in each of them
(5.9). What he does mean to imply is that living things embody the
Concept much more directly than non-living things do. The kind of
centeredness and integration that they exhibit is much more developed
and explicit than those that Hegel identified in Mechanism, Chemism,
and teleology, as such. But it is clearly no accident that life follows
immediately after teleology in Hegel’s account, just as it does in the
unfolding of Aristotle’s physics and biology. Here we should remember
what I said about the “reality” of finite things, in connection with true
infinity: Finitude is not real in the way that infinity is real. But finitude
is a necessary aspect of the reality of the infinite (see 3.9). Likewise,
Mechanism, Chemism and teleology aren’t Conceptual in the way that
life is Conceptual; but they are necessary aspects of life’s Conceptuality,
traces of which can consequently be found in them as well.

16 “It is only insofar as [the living thing] is dead that these two sides of the Idea are diverse
components” (EL §216).
250 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Hegel analyzes the functioning of living things first internally,

and then externally. Internally, they exhibit “sensibility,” “irritability,”
and “reproduction” (WL 6: 478–480/GW 12:185–186/768–769; EL
§218A). “Sensibility” is the capacity to experience impressions (from
whatever source, internal or external to the organism); “irritability”
is the capacity to respond to such impressions, in a variety of possible
ways; and “reproduction” is the capacity, not to produce offspring,
but to “reproduce” what one presently is: to maintain oneself in existence.
Reproduction, Hegel says, is the “truth” of the first two (WL 6:479/
GW 12:186,7/769), because, I take it, it is in relation to the project of
maintaining oneself in existence that one’s impressions acquire mean-
ing, and that one’s response to those impressions has a point. “Each
of the singular moments,” he says, “is essentially the totality of all of
them” (ibid.), as in the pure Concept (5.1): They each embody, im-
plicitly, both of the others. Hegel identifies sensibility as the moment of
universality, irritability as the moment of particularity, and reproduction
as the moment of singularity. The living thing exists, as such, insofar as
it combines a sensitivity to itself and its surroundings with a response
to itself and its surroundings in a way that reflects and (re-) produces
its ongoing self.17
Insofar as the living thing “reproduces” (maintains) itself, and thus
gives itself form, its physical interaction with the world around it be-
comes an issue. To have a goal of self-maintenance is to have needs,
drives, and feelings, including (sometimes) pain, and to use force
against, and to appropriate, the world around one.18 Hegel’s head-
ing for this category of functioning is “assimilation” (WL 6:483/GW
12:189,14/772; cf. EN §§352, 357ff.).

.. The “Genus”: Universality and “Identity with the Other”

The meaning of “reproduction” or self-maintenance is not as obvious
as we may have been conditioned to regard it, however. What makes a
later stage a stage of the same “self,” or the same living thing, as a prior

17 An analysis that is very similar to Hegel’s, here, can be seen in Diotima’s speech, in
Plato’s Symposium, when she discusses the organism’s physical self-reproduction (self-
maintenance) and its reproduction (preservation) of its “manners, customs, opinions,
desires,” etc. (207d–208b).
18 WL 6:481–483/GW 12:187–189/769–772. Hegel tacitly takes animal life as exhibiting
the features of life as such more fully than plant life does. This whole analysis is presented
in much greater detail in EN.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 251

stage? Indeed, what is it that the parts or organs of a living thing share,
at a given time, that makes them parts or organs of one and the same
living thing? Hegel’s name for the answer to this question – whatever
exactly it may be – is “universality”:
[The] transformation [of what is mechanical and chemical] into living
individuality constitutes the return of this individuality into itself, so that
production – which as such would be a passing over into something
other – becomes reproduction, in which the living thing posits itself for
itself as identical with itself. . . . In this going-together of the individual with
its objectivity, which at first was posited in advance as indifferent to it, the
individual, which on one side has constituted itself as an actual singularity,
has equally superseded its particularity and raised itself to universality.
(WL 6:483–484/GW 12:189,25–2/772; emphasis added)

Production is reproduction only insofar as what it produces is “identical

with itself.” The individual’s involvement with mechanical and chemi-
cal objectivity makes it “actual,” but it also raises the question of what
unifies all of this objectivity into an individual, and thus the question of
“universality.” In place of the living individual and the objectivity with
which it interacts, we have, then, a “real, universal life,” which Hegel
calls “Genus” (Gattung) (WL 6:484/GW 12:189,5–6/772). His point is
that if there is a standard by which we identify sameness or identity in
a living thing across space and time – or by imposing which, the liv-
ing thing makes itself the same or identical (“reproduces” itself) – that
standard isn’t on the same logical level as the components of the living
thing.19 It is superior to them in the way that “universality” is superior
to “particularity.” This universality within life, he calls “genus,” by which
he refers not only to the familiar sort of “genus” to which “species” are
subordinate, but to biological groupings in general, including species
in particular. To belong to one of these groupings is to have the stan-
dard of one’s sameness or identity across space and time, and thus
what constitutes one’s “reproduction,” specified by a sort of authority,
to which one is subordinate – and by which one’s selfhood is achieved,
since it’s only through a functioning “universality” that a being can be
itself. “Genus” membership is not the only kind of universality through
which a living being can achieve selfhood – Hegel will soon be talking

19 In referring to space and time, here, I’m speaking loosely, since the Logic doesn’t
deal with space and time as such. More accurately, I should describe the universality
as making the same living thing out of whatever multiplicity of (“mechanical” and
“chemical”) ingredients it is composed of.
252 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

about other kinds (under the heading of “Cognition”). Genus mem-

bership is simply the first and simplest way in which a living being can
achieve (some degree of) self hood.
The other important feature of genus membership, which Hegel
turns to immediately, is that it creates a relationship between the in-
dividual and other members of the same genus. Hegel refers to this
result, figuratively, as a “doubling” of the individual (WL 6:484/GW
12:190,24/773). Since it understands itself as an individual only
through its membership in a “genus,” its individuality directly involves
it with other members of the genus, as well:

Though the individual is indeed in itself genus, it is not for itself the
genus; what is for it is as yet only another living individual; the Concept that
is distinguished from itself has for object, with which it is identical, not
itself as Concept but a Concept that as a living being has at the same time
external objectivity for it, a form that is therefore immediately reciprocal
[gegenseitig].
(WL 6:485/GW 12:190,7–13/773; emphasis added)

That is, its membership in the genus takes, initially, the form of a rela-
tionship with other members of the genus. This situation, in which “the
identity of individual self-feeling,” which is achieved through member-
ship in the genus, “is in what is at the same time another self-standing
individual,” Hegel describes as a “contradiction” (WL 6:485/GW 12:190,
35–1/773; emphasis added). This seems, on the face of it, to be a rea-
sonable description; it is also consistent with the account of Hegelian
“contradiction” that I gave in 4.12, where I said that “contradiction”
results from the unstable coexistence of two threads, one composed
of negativity and its successors (true infinity, positing reflection, iden-
tity, the Concept, and so forth), and the other composed of being and
its successors (determinate being, external reflection, diversity, mecha-
nism, and so forth). What we have here is a living thing that seeks to be
individuated by embodying “universality,” of some sort (as in negativity,
true infinity, and the Concept), but which finds this “universality” present
to it, initially, only in the form of other living things of its kind – that is, in
the form of external, diverse particulars. This is indeed a characteristic
problem, given the materials that Hegel’s Logic has identified as being
available for us to work with.
Besides saying that “the identity of individual self-feeling is in what is
at the same time another self-standing individual,” another way in which
Hegel describes the dependence of the first individual’s individuality
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 253

on another individual is as its “identity with the other individual,”

which he equates to “the individual’s universality” (WL 6:485/GW
12:190,14/773; emphasis added). The locution, “identity with the
other . . . ,” will occur in other important contexts later, as well. To un-
derstand it, we must remember that “identity,” as Hegel analyzed it in
Essence, was converted into “difference” and “diversity,” which were
then replaced by Opposition and Contradiction. So “identity,” as Hegel
understands it, is not incompatible with numerical diversity. Neither,
however, is diversity the last word; rather, the most fundamental way of
understanding diversity is as “contradiction” (which resolves itself into
an underlying “ground”). That is why it is not surprising that Hegel
speaks of “identity,” here, in close association with “contradiction.” The
two (diverse) individuals that he is speaking of are “identical” in the
sense that the “individual self-feeling” of each depends upon (is “in”)
the other; but this dependence involves or reduces to a “contradic-
tion,” whose resolution will take us beyond both the “identity” and the
“diversity” that the initial situation seemed to exhibit.

.. The “Death” of the Living Individual

The solution – the resolution or underlying “ground” of the contradic-
tion – that Hegel describes the living thing as finding is very striking.
To “realize itself as something universal” (WL 6:485/GW 12:190,16–
17/773), the individual joins together with the other individual to
“propagate the living species,” since through offspring the separate-
ness of the initial pair is, in a sense, overcome. This solution is unsat-
isfactory, however, because it merely repeats the problem in the next
generation (or between the generations), creating the familiar “infi-
nite progression.” But “copulation” (Begattung) nevertheless contains
the gist of a more successful solution, insofar as it implies the “death”
of the “immediacy of living individuality,” and that death, Hegel says,
is the genesis of “Spirit,” and in particular, of “Cognition” (Erkenntnis)
(WL 6:486–487/GW 12:190–191/773–774), which is the next phase
of the Idea.
Before we examine this next phase, however, it would be useful to
know just how copulation implies “death”! Quoted in full, Hegel’s state-
ment is that “in copulation, the immediacy of the living individuality
perishes; the death of this life is the emergence of spirit” (ibid.; empha-
sis added). The death of the living individual’s “immediacy” follows, I
suggest, from the realization (1) that the individual depends on others
254 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

for its individuality; (2) that its solution to this problem – the production
of offspring (which unite it with others) – simply makes it dependent
on still more others; and finally (3) that as a result of this solution, the
first individual must itself be seen as the product of copulation, so that
in all these respects, it is not immediately given. To achieve individuality
through membership in a genus is clearly not to have it immediately.
Why does Hegel describe this non-immediacy, so dramatically, as “the
death of this life” (ibid.)? He describes it in this way because it removes
any need for the individual to live forever. Being replaced by its off-
spring, and itself being the offspring of others, it is part of an ongoing
process, the “genus,” that makes the individual’s immortality entirely
dispensible.
The fact that one belongs to a particular genus, that one is not one’s
own parent, and that one may have offspring, have utterly fundamental
consequences for living things, including, obviously, ourselves. When
Hegel says that “the living thing dies because it is the contradiction
of being in itself the universal, the genus, and yet existing only as a
singular being” (EL §221A), he means that because of the special sig-
nificance that our relations with other particular members of our genus
necessarily have for us, it would make no sense for us to live forever. Virginia
Woolf’s novel, Orlando, directs our attention to this point by imagining
a life that goes on for century after century, entering continually into
new relationships with new particular humans. It ceases to look like a
human life, or a life in which the living being that lives it could be “the
same person,” and thus herself, and thus free. Hegel is not saying that
biology, as such, is destiny, but rather that finitude, and the specific
relationships that go with it, are destiny, because (in my continuing re-
frain) true infinity is only as the self-transcendence of the finite, so that
what doesn’t have a finite life, plays no role in true infinity.20
That is why, though Hegel often chooses to use “hard” language for
his remarks about finitude and about the living being’s relation to its
Genus (in which, he says, it “goes under” [EL §221]), the underlying

20 By contrast, then, with Charles Taylor’s view that true infinity is “an infinite life em-
bodied in a circle of finite beings, each of which is inadequate to it and therefore goes
under, but is replaced in necessary order by another” (Hegel, p. 240; emphasis added),
Hegel seems to be saying that life can be infinite only through finite beings, so their only
“inadequacy” is to themselves, not to it. The “contradiction of being in itself the universal,
the genus, and yet existing only as a singular being” (EL §221A) is not a contradiction
between the singular being and something other than it; it is a contradiction within the
singular being.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 255

thought is not hard, but simply truthful. Because true infinity is only as
the self-transcendence of the finite, to be free, to be oneself, is to be finite, and
dreams of a temporally infinite life ignore what life, as such, is about – which
is, among other things, relationships to a finite number of particular
other living beings of one’s own genus, and (through them) to “the
Genus” as a whole, and, through this Genus, to the Concept and the
Idea, or “God.” By making this point about freedom as finitude, Hegel
anticipates all the pathos with which existentialism and humanism focus
on the inherent finitude of human existence – while at the same time
pointing, through his conception of this finitude as transcending itself
through freedom, Life, the Genus, and so forth, to something that
redeems this finitude: to a truth of traditional theology or spirituality that
(at least) the more pessimistic forms of existentialism and humanism do
not appreciate. (Instead, one might think that they draw a good deal
of their drama from the mistaken suggestion that in the absence of
individual immortality, there can be no transcendence whatever.) This
other, redeeming transcendence is what Hegel’s philosophy of “Spirit”
will be about.
Important parallels to Hegel’s thoughts about the relation between
the individual living being and its genus can be found in Plato’s remarks
about how reproduction “is what mortals have in place of immortality”
(Symposium 206E), and in Aristotle’s statement that “the most natural
of all functions for a living thing . . . is to produce another thing of the
same sort as itself . . . in order to share as far as it can in the everlasting
and divine” (De Anima 415a27). Like Hegel, Plato and Aristotle then
go on – Plato in the pages of the Symposium immediately following, and
Aristotle in his discussions of intellectual functioning and friendship,
later in De Anima and in the Nicomachean Ethics – to describe additional,
higher ways (including, in Plato’s case, a sort of spiritual reproduction)
in which humans, in particular, can participate in immortality or divin-
ity. In none of these three thinkers is there a “regret” that the finite
being cannot be immortal. Aristotle’s theory of individuality and its ful-
filment in “happiness” (eudaimonia), which is the full performance of
the individual’s “task” or “function” (ergon), leaves no room for yearn-
ing for temporal prolongation, as such. Plato obviously is interested, in
the Phaedo, in the possibility of the soul’s being immortal, but it seems
clear from the Symposium and the Republic that he does not regard the
immortality of the individual soul as necessary for human fulfilment
(see 2.3, paragraph 4). In the Phaedo itself, none of Socrates’s actual
arguments, as distinct from his charming fantasies of reincarnation and
256 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

the afterlife, seem to entail the eternal existence of a soul that is distinct,
in important ways, from other eternally existing souls; so that it seems
at least open to question as to whether the conception of immortality
that Plato is exploring there is really the immortality of an individual
soul, in the way that immortality was later conceived in conventional
Christian theology.
The true significance of the conventional conception of personal
immortality, Hegel implies, is in its implication that the individual hu-
man being can and must go beyond her finite limitations – a claim with
which Hegel fully agrees, both in what he says about Life and in his sub-
sequent remarks on “Cognition.” As for the conventional interpretation
of the conventional conception, Hegel was careful not to directly reject
it, which professionally would probably have been a suicidal thing for
him to do.21 But the unstated implication of Hegel’s critique of spuri-
ous infinity – or one that is stated in connection with Kant’s postulate of
immortality, but not in connection with the traditional Christian doc-
trine of the immortality of the individual soul – is that focussing on
a quantitative issue such as the duration of the soul’s existence, and
what may happen to it at various times in the future, distracts from
the presence of true infinity in the present, which (in Hegel’s view) is
what religious experience and a relationship to God are truly about.
Within the Christian tradition, it is especially Christian mysticism that
shares this view of Hegel’s, and makes it clear that one can value the
Christian Bible highly, as a source (when properly interpreted) of both
ethical and metaphysical truths, without necessarily believing in individ-
ual immortality. Hegel’s affinity for Christian mysticism is evident in his
enthusiasm about such writers as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme.22

21 See T. Pinkard, Hegel. A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),

p. 577, and W. Jaeschke, Reason in Religion. The Foundations of Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 365–367. Ludwig Feuerbach lost all
chance of an academic position when he publically attacked the idea of the immortality
of the soul (see Karl Ameriks, “Feuerbach, Marx, and Kierkegaard,” in K. Ameriks, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000], pp. 260–261).
22 See 3.18. Hegel is reported to have said, about Eckhart: “There, indeed, we have what
we want!” G. Nicolin, Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1970), p.
261. Cyril O’Regan writes that “Hegel relates positively to such mystics as Boehme and
Eckhart only to the degree to which he ignores, or better, systematically represses, the
apophatic [‘negative’ – R. Wallace] vocabulary and the suggested limits of cognition”
(The Heterodox Hegel [Albany: SUNY Press, 1994], p. 382); but it could be suggested
that the parallel to “negative theology” in Hegel is his critique of the finite and of
the pretensions of the “understanding.” We certainly do not and cannot know God
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 257

For living things as such, freedom – going beyond their finitude –

is an option only in the very limited sense that they can contribute to
the reproduction of their genus. Limited though this option may seem,
Hegel says that through it “the Idea of life has freed itself not just from
some one or other (particular) immediate This, but from this initial
immediacy in general. Thereby the Idea of Life comes to itself, or to its
truth, and therefore it enters into existence for its own self as free genus.
The death of the merely immediate singular organism is the emergence
of Spirit” (EL §222).
Hegel’s thought is simply that insofar as a being relates to itself as
in any way “going beyond” itself, it has (in principle) an entirely dif-
ferent relation to itself and its world, from the immediate relations of
self-forming, need, and assimilation that characterized life as such. The
“death of the merely immediate singular organism” – which is to say, its
recognition that it comes from and can contribute to something larger than itself –
changes everything. Here, Hegel’s response to atomism or egoism – the
challenge that he doesn’t mention explicitly here, but to which I said
in 3.23 that we could interpret the Logic as a whole as his systematic
response – has finally begun to take concrete shape. Hegel is arguing, as
I explained in the previous section (5.14), that living individuals must
function as members of a single genus, and (now) that in doing so, they
recognize and concern themselves with a reality beyond themselves, be
that reality only their biological origin and their capacity to procreate.
This reality beyond the living being, with which it is unavoidably in-
volved, is not, Hegel has been arguing, a set of mere contingent facts.
Rather, it is essential to these beings that they are alive, and that they
are therefore products of and capable of procreation. These facts aren’t
optional; they have been, as Hegel says, “deduced,” and deduced from
the nature of the Concept and freedom themselves. So freedom, for
these beings, cannot be mere arbitrary choice, but must take into ac-
count the fundamental nature of their relationship to the genus and its

in the way that we know finite things; in that sense, God is indeed unknowable. When
Pseudo-Dionysius writes that “in knowing nothing, [man] knows in a way that surpasses
understanding” (The Essential Mystics, Andrew Harvey, ed. [Edison, NJ: Castle, 1998],
p. 188), Hegel certainly doesn’t disagree. And when Hegel says that the inadequacies
of the finite, as such, lead the mind to the infinite, Pseudo-Dionysius certainly doesn’t
disagree. If, on the other hand, “negative” theology rejects any kind of understanding
whatever – that of “reason” as well as that of “the understanding” – then it seems to
run afoul of Hegel’s critique of spurious infinity, which says that if something is defined
purely as what it is not (as in, “by his nature, this God is not understandable in any way”),
it will be rendered finite by that definition, and thus surely less than divine.
258 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

other members. This basic anti-egoist line of thought will be developed

throughout Hegel’s philosophy of spirit and his ethical and political
theory.23
It is also worth noting how the significance that Hegel ascribes to
“death” differs from the significance that is ascribed to it, in modern
existentialism, by (for example) Martin Heidegger. In Being and Time
(1927), Heidegger sees “being-towards-death” as, in effect, the defining
feature of human existence. Hegel similarly sees death as of fundamen-
tal importance for humans (and all living things), but by connecting
it to the individual’s relationship to the “genus” – to the fact that the
individual can be a parent, and has parents, and thus is necessarily part
of something greater than herself – and to the transcendence of mere in-
dividuality that is implied in these facts and is generalized, subsequently,
in “Cognition” (all of which constitutes the “redeeming transcendence”
that I referred to earlier), Hegel deprives death of the absoluteness that
Heidegger ascribes to it. The individual, as such, of course meets her
end, in death. But what she comes from and contributes to, does not.
It is worth asking whether the implications of this simple fact – that
death, or finitude, can be (in effect) the birth of something higher – are
sufficiently appreciated by existentialism.

.. The Idea as “Cognition,” or Spirit

In the Logic, Hegel’s general term for the new relationship between
subject and object that is made possible by living beings’ “going be-
yond” themselves is “Cognition” (Erkennen). (Hegel uses “Spirit” [Geist],
here, almost interchangeably with “Cognition,” though technically he
should reserve “spirit” for the category that he develops later, in the
Philosophy of Spirit, which subsumes space and time, or nature, as well as
the multiplicity of the “Genus” and the functioning of “Cognition.”) Ini-
tially, Cognition breaks down into two forms: cognition proper, which
is the pursuit of knowledge of a reality that is not oneself, and “willing”
(das Wollen), which is the pursuit of the good. Cognition proper aims
to overcome the one-sidedness of the Idea’s subjectivity (by taking up
the objective world into it), while willing aims to overcome the one-
sidedness of the Idea’s objectivity (by aligning it with subjectivity’s inner
standards) (EL §225). Both of these activities, Hegel is saying, are ways

23 As, indeed, a similar anti-atomist line of thought is developed in Plato’s and Aristotle’s
theories of the soul, and their ethical and political theories. See note 17.
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 259

of implementing the living being’s new-found relation to something be-

yond itself. It can seek to know what that thing beyond itself objectively
is, and it can also seek to transform that thing so as to align it with its
inner standard of how things ought to be. Insofar as the being engages
in either or both of these activities, it engages in Cognition, and can be
referred to (in a shorthand way) as “Spirit.”
If you are thinking that this kind of dualism of subject versus object
and knowledge versus value does not seem in keeping with Hegel’s ini-
tial conception of the Idea as reason and actuality, which I described
as a single reality, structured by the Concept, which cannot be segre-
gated into a domain of “theory” and a domain of “practice,” a domain
of “knowledge” and a domain of “faith,” and so on (see 5.10), you are
absolutely right. Hegel is laying out this dualism not as a feature of
the Idea as such, in its final incarnation – which he will call the “absolute
Idea” – but only as exhibiting, in its initial form, a crucial feature of the
Idea as such, which is its dimension of transcendence, of going beyond
finitude.
Living beings, as such – in their self-shaping, need, and assimilation –
operate in a finite manner. When they relate to their genus, and thus
go beyond themselves, they exhibit a kind of transcendence. Spirit or
Cognition exhibits that transcendence in a purer form, as the search for
knowledge and as the promotion of the good. When, as Hegel describes
in EL §232, the search for knowledge arrives at the idea of necessity (as it
did at the end of the Doctrine of Essence [see 4.12–4.14]), and figures
out what that necessity is fundamentally about, it discovers a connection
between objectivity and subjectivity that wasn’t what it expected to find
(4.14–5.1). (Here we must understand the search for knowledge as
including, implicitly, the entire investigation that is embodied in the
Science of Logic, up to the beginning of the Doctrine of the Concept.) This
discovery begins to undermine the object/subject, knowledge/value
divide, from the side of the object and knowledge (EL §232).
A corresponding undermining also occurs from the side of the sub-
ject and value (the promotion of the good). Initially, the good seems
to be present in the objective world only incompletely, as an “infinite
progress” (EL §234). However, “the activity [Tätigkeit] supersedes the
subjectivity of the end [Zweck, telos], and with it the objectivity, the an-
tithesis that makes both finite” (ibid.; emphasis added). What is this
“activity,” and how does it have this effect? When Hegel first intro-
duced the term “activity,” as part of his discussion of necessity and the
Sache, the “matter in question,” in the Doctrine of Essence, it stood
260 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

for “the movement of translating the conditions into the matter in

question . . . to give existence to the matter in question by superseding
the existence that the conditions have” (EL §148). That is, activity is
the emergence of what really matters, from the mere circumstances. So
what Hegel is saying in §234 is that insofar as the good is in fact being
promoted, in the objective world, that world is not just in need of be-
ing made good, by the subject’s standards – it is, objectively, good. The
“end” is present, is functioning, in objectivity. As he said in a lecture:

Unsatisfied striving vanishes when we recognize that the final purpose

[Endzweck] of the world is just as much accomplished as it is eternally
accomplishing itself.
(EL §234A)

The presence of the activity that seeks to make the world good is what
constitutes the world’s already accomplished goodness. And since, if the
argument of the Logic is sound, this is not just a subjective opinion but
a piece of knowledge, the antithesis of object and subject or knowledge
and value is thereby superseded.

.. The Absolute Idea as a Refutation of Egoism

This result – that “the objective world is in this way in and for itself
the Idea, positing itself eternally as end and at the same time bringing
forth its [own] actuality through activity” (EL §235) – Hegel calls (as I
said) “the absolute Idea.” Life was the Idea existing in itself; Cognition
was the Idea existing for itself; the absolute Idea is absolute because it
is the Idea existing in and for itself (EL §236A). Because it achieves an
immediacy (the “in itself”-ness) that the contradictory finitudes of Cog-
nition lacked, the absolute Idea is in one way a return to the initial form
of the Idea, to Life. But since it contains, as superseded within itself,
the transcending activity (the “for itself”-ness) of the Spirit – that is, of
both forms of Cognition – it is also something deeper. In the absolute
Idea, Hegel says in the culminating substantive claim of his Logic,

the Concept is not merely soul, but free subjective Concept that is for
itself and therefore possesses personality – the practical, objective Concept
determined in and for itself which, as person, is impenetrable atomic
subjectivity, but which, nonetheless, is not exclusive singularity, but is for
itself universality and cognition, and has in its other its own objectivity for
its object.
(WL 6: 549/GW 12:236,4–11/824)
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 261

If the Concept were merely “soul,” it would confer life on everything

that it informs (see 5.13, first paragraph). But it isn’t merely soul; it
also “doubles” or multiplies itself into particular living beings sharing a
genus. But these beings don’t merely go about their business, “impen-
etrable and atomic,” indifferent to each other. Rather, they transcend
themselves through their relationship to their genus (5.14), and some
of them (those that are capable of “spirit”) understand that they have
more reality or being through this self-transcendence, and pursue it
consciously and systematically: They are “for themselves universality
and cognition.” Hegel then repeats his characteristic, apparently para-
doxical claim that the existence of the being that transcends itself in
this way is “not exclusive,” but instead it has, in its “other,” “its own objec-
tivity.” Just as he said, in connection with the Genus, that in it we have
“identity with the other individual, the individual’s universality” (WL 6:
485/GW 12:190,14/773; see 5.14).
How are we to understand this “identity with the other individual”?
When he first introduced “identity,” Hegel described it as “the equality
with itself that produces itself to unity” (WL 6:39/GW 11:260,14/411–
412). That is to say, identity is a function of “negativity”: of the self-
restoring selfhood that survived the critiques of quantity and measure,
and consequently is the topic of the Doctrine of Essence. In Hegel’s ac-
count of the “Reflection-Determinations,” “difference” and “diversity”
emerged from identity, rather than being opposed to it. That is, they
were ways of implementing self-restoring selfhood. The same pattern
then recurs in the Doctrine of the Concept: As “identity” (see 5.1),
the Concept needs to differentiate or specify itself, and it does so in
the form of Objectivity – of Mechanism’s “diverse” objects. When the
Concept – so as to be “in and for itself” (see 5.9, third paragraph) –
is united with Objectivity, in the Idea (initially in the form of Life), the
Concept’s “identity” returns, as “self-determining identity” (WL 6:461/
GW 12:171,32/754), superseding Mechanism’s diversity. It does this
initially in the form of the “Genus.” The living individual achieves its
individuality only through its relation to others (the Genus) because it
needs something higher than itself, in order to have a standard of what
would constitute “reproduction” (preservation) of itself, and it finds
this higher standard in its biological identity, as a member of a partic-
ular genus, and thus also in its relationship to other members of this
genus. It is “identical” with these others, insofar as its self-individuation
depends upon its orienting itself toward what it has in common with
them, and thus toward its own finitude – its “death” – and the way
in which it can go beyond that finitude through relations with these
262 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

others (through birth and procreation). In “cognition,” life then prac-

tices going-beyond-itself in its most general form, as the pursuit both
of knowledge and of the good, and indeed of the inseparable combi-
nation of the two that is knowledge that the pursuit of the good is ob-
jectively real. In that knowledge, “the subject’s singularity, with which it
was burdened by its presupposition [that the good is a merely subjective
end and limited in its content], disappears along with that presupposi-
tion” (WL 6:548/GW 12:235/823; emphasis added). That is, when the
subject discovers that its going-beyond-itself, in the pursuit of knowl-
edge and of the good, is not its own “merely subjective” and “limited”
commitment, but rather is the “inner ground and actual subsistence”
of the objective world – in the way that Hegel has demonstrated in
the foregoing book – it discovers its “free, universal identity with itself”
(all quotes ibid.; emphasis added), which is its identity, through the
Concept, with the entire objective project of knowing and pursuing the
good.
“Exclusive singularity,” the alternative that Hegel’s culminating claim
in the block quote says no longer applies, is precisely egoism. “Exclu-
sion” (thereafter called “repulsion”) was the process by which the “one”
related to other ones, after the moments of being-for-self had “collapsed
into undifferentiatedness” (WL 5:182–183/GW 21:150–151,27/163;
see 3.21); and these “ones,” together with the “void,” were the prin-
ciples of atomism, which was the initial representative, in the Logic,
of egoism. What Hegel has done in the “Reflection-Determinations,”
“Singularity,” and the “Idea” is to derive an alternative conception of
individuality to replace the one that is embodied in atomism. In this
alternative conception, the “free, subjective Concept . . . as person, is
impenetrable atomic subjectivity” (this is the partial truth of egoism,
preserved within the alternative conception as “diversity,” Mechanism,
and the “doubling” of Life) – but at the same time it is not “exclusive
singularity, but is for itself universality and cognition, and has in its other
its own objectivity for its object” (all of this is from the block quote):
that is, through its Genus-membership (which as we saw is essential to
its individuality), it is universal, and insofar as it grasps the point of this
universality, through Cognition (both theoretical and practical), it is
aware of its universality as its identity with its other – that is, with other
“impenetrable atomic subjectivities,” or persons. And this identity of
the person with other persons presumably has the same sort of con-
sequences that the identity of the living individual with its other had:
that the person cannot orient herself purely to her “atomic” (egoistic)
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 263

concerns, but must recognize the significance of other persons, with

whom (as Hegel has shown) she is “identical.” This is Hegel’s answer,
in the Logic, to egoism – an answer that he will expand upon, in his
Philosophy of Spirit, with his famous account of mutual recognition.24
What Hegel’s development of the Concept into the absolute Idea
has done, then, is to show how the “free love” that characterized the
Concept (which “bears itself toward what is different from it as toward
its own self” [WL 6:277/GW 12:35,3–5/603; see 5.2]) is a feature not
only of the “universal,” or of divinity, as such, but also of the finite,
living and cognizing things whose self-supersession (when they achieve
reality) constitutes that universal or that divinity. Should the defend-
ers of egoism (such as Hobbes and Gauthier, whom we discussed in
Chapter 2) concede that Hegel has shown that an agent who is aware
of what her full reality requires – namely, her “identity” with other per-
sons – must logically be concerned, not only about herself and her
needs and desires, but also about other persons and their needs and
desires?
That persons, as such, are “identical” with one another, is a dra-
matic claim, which could hardly run more against the grain of social
atomism or rational choice theory. Hegel’s argument for this claim is
his argument, first, that sheer quantity is not determinate in itself, but
must resort to “measure,” which in turn is not determinate in itself,
but depends on an “inner specifying unity,” which is indistinguishable
from “negativity” itself; second, that the “diversity” that this negativity
becomes is ultimately the manifestation of an underlying substantial
identity; and third, that when this substantial identity’s manifestation is
understood as “Concept,” and specified as Mechanism’s diverse objects,
the identicalness of this Concept is in fact regained through the increas-
ing degrees of universality (or “in-and-for-itself”-ness) of Chemism, tele-
ology, the Genus-relationship, and Cognition. Underlying the entire
argument, then, is the generative “negativity” that survived the collapse
of true infinity; and the crucial premise is that if anything is real (that
is, self-sufficiently determinate), it is by virtue of this negativity, so that

24 Michael Inwood, Hegel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 310, and Willem
A. deVries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988),
pp. 104–106, discuss the question of how Hegel thinks that the pure thoughts that
constitute the absolute Idea relate to the pure thoughts that constitute an individual
‘I.’ Hegel’s account of the “doubling” of the individual, and its “identity with the other
individual,” in Life, and of its having “in its other its own objectivity for its object,” in
the absolute Idea, is his explicit answer to Inwood’s and deVries’s question.
264 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Mechanism’s diverse objects have their reality only through their re-
lationship to the Concept (the in-and-for-itselfness that reasserts itself
through Chemism, teleology, the Genus-relationship, and Cognition),
and that relationship makes them “identical” with each other.
The most obvious feature of this argument for a defender of ego-
ism to object to is precisely this crucial premise – that if anything is
real, it is by virtue of this “negativity” that survived the collapse of true
infinity. But as I said earlier (4.7), the “ego’s” preoccupation with its
own self-preservation, or its satisfaction of its own desires, as its defining
concern – that is, egoism’s claim to be a normative science, a doctrine
of “rational choice,” and not just a descriptive science – already involves
going beyond mere inertia or mere response to impulse, as such, to-
ward an orientation to selfhood – to what is one’s own; so that it is hard
to see how egoism can consistently reject Hegelian “negativity,” which
is simply each quality’s attempt to “be itself” (to be what it is by virtue
of itself, rather than by virtue of relations to others).
And it’s also hard to see how egoism can reject the other thought
lying behind Hegel’s premise, which is that reality should ultimately
be self-sufficient, so that if negativity yields self-sufficiency, it is also the
key to reality. That this argument makes negativity into, in effect, “God”
(see 3.17), insofar as everything that is real and diverse and objective
flows from it and is subject to its loving authority (see 5.2), will be a
compelling objection only for someone for whom the rejection of all
“theology” is more important than the defense of and analysis of ra-
tionality, selfhood, and reality’s self-sufficiency. This God or negativity,
once again, being the self-transcendence of the finite or of the diverse
or objective or “doubled,” is not something that is alien to the finite or di-
verse or objective or doubled, so that it could use the latter (as Charles
Taylor says) as its “vehicle”; rather, it is the accomplished “reality” of
the finite or diverse or objective or doubled. That Mechanism’s diverse
“objects,” and so on, are subordinate to this negativity and ultimately
subsumed within the “in-and-for-itself” “identity” of the later version of
negativity that Hegel calls the Absolute Idea simply follows from the
priority of the “reality” that this negativity delivers.
Hegel’s argument differs from Kant’s argument for the same conclu-
sion – that true rationality or autonomy requires respect for one’s fellow
rational agents – in that Hegel shows (as I explained in Chapter 3) that
the selfhood or “negativity” on which the argument turns is not a “pos-
tulate” that needs to be taken seriously only by those who have Kantian
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 265

“practical faith,” and which as such is opposed to the facts that we can
know about the phenomenal world; instead, it is a necessary feature of
any world that is real in the sense that it is self-sufficient (that it is what
it is by virtue of itself). That is, Hegel’s argument differs from Kant’s by
virtue of the connection, in the form of negativity or true infinity, that
Hegel argues for (and thus shows that we can know) between the finite
and the infinite, inclinations and selfhood, the world and “God,” and
“theory” and “practice,” a connection that makes the diversity, objectiv-
ity, or “doubling” of agents a necessary feature of itself, and which thus
creates the “identity” between agents that Kant, in effect, seeks (as the
“Kingdom of Ends”), but which, as I argued in 2.7, Kant cannot justify,
because he lacks such a connection between the finite and the infinite,
and so on.
If Hegel’s argument succeeds in refuting egoism, and if, as I argued,
Kant’s argument does not, then we have good reason to take seriously
Hegel’s claim, which I discussed in 5.6, that Kant’s principle of auton-
omy is “empty,” in comparison to Hegel’s.
As far as egoism is concerned: Even if its defenders were to grant
Hegel’s argument up to this point, they would still have one recourse,
which is to point out that the agents whom Hegel is considering so far
are not separated from each other in space and time, but only by diver-
sity, objectivity, and the “duplication” of the living individual; so that
Hegel hasn’t yet addressed the full “salt sundering sea” that separates
agents such as ourselves from each other. Hegel knows this, of course,
and intends to address this full separateness in his Philosophy of Nature
and Philosophy of Spirit. It’s also true that the concrete practical impli-
cations of taking other persons into account, and not functioning as
a mere “atom,” remain entirely to be spelled out. This issue, too, will
be addressed in detail in the Philosophy of Spirit, and in the expanded
version of “Objective Spirit” that is the Philosophy of Right.

.. “Method” as Being and as Result: The Circle Closes

In the final section of the Logic, Hegel sums up the Absolute Idea as
“the Idea that thinks itself” (EL § 236; cf. WL 6:550/GW 12:237,38–
4/825) – by analogy with Aristotle’s divine “thought [that] thinks
itself” (Metaphysics xii, 7, 1072b20) – because its reality has been ac-
complished through the transcendence represented by theoretical and
practical Cognition (that is, thought), which have now reached the
266 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

stage of thinking themselves as a unity. The content and the form of

this thought are so indistinguishable that they can be called, simply,
“method,” though because of the reality that it accomplishes and is,
this is a “speculative method,” rather than just a cognitive one (EL
§238; cf. WL 6:550–551/GW 12:237–238,26–9/825–826). That is, it
is a “method” that has existential as well as cognitive consequences –
that brings itself (that is, full reality) into existence, by studying itself.
Methodos (Greek) = “journey after,” so “method” is not inherently lim-
ited to cognitive pursuit; it could just as well designate, as it does here,
a pursuit, by inadequate “realities,” of full reality.
This “method” takes the forms of “beginning,” “advance [Fortgang]
and development,” and “end.” Here is a précis of the EL’s description of
these. The “beginning” is, of course, being, or the immediate. Seen from
the point of view of the speculative Idea, however, this being is the Idea’s
self-determination (its self-specification as particulars). As such, rather
than being “immediate,” it is “negation, positedness, mediatedness . . . ,
and positedness in advance” (EL §238). But since this mediatedness
(since it is Idea) is the mediatedness of the Concept, it is the Concept in
itself, as yet undetermined, and thus it is “universal” (ibid.). “Advance”
is the positing of the division into universal and particular that thus
emerges, so that the Concept’s immediacy and universality are overtly
demoted to a mere moment (of the Concept or the Idea) (EL §239).
In the “end,” however, this “different” (the “advance”) is posited as what
it is in the Concept. As the negative of the “first” (the beginning) and as
identity with it, it is its own negativity, and thus it is the unity in which these
two (the beginning and the advance) are superseded and preserved.
When the Concept “closes” itself with itself in this way, it is the realized
Concept or the Idea, for which this “end” is only the disappearance of
“the ‘shine’ that the beginning was immediate and the Idea is a result”
(EL §242). The beginning is immediate, and the end is a “result,” only as
long as they are different from each other; but the Concept is identical
with itself, even in its otherness (see 5.1, final paragraph); so when the
different is posited as what it is in the Concept, then the immediate
and the result, being and the Idea, are seen as identical. The “circle”
of logical science is closed:

Thus logic . . . has returned, in the absolute Idea, to this one-fold unity
that is its beginning; the pure immediacy of being, in which at first every
determination appears to be extinguished or removed by abstraction,
is the Idea that through mediation – in the form of the superseding of
 freedom, god, and refutation of rational egoism 267

mediation – has reached equality with itself. Method is the pure Concept
that now relates only to itself; it is therefore the one-fold relation to itself
that is being. But now it is also fulfilled being, the Concept that compre-
hends itself, being as the concrete and likewise simply [schlechthin] intensive
totality.
(WL 6:572/GW 12:252,31–1/842; emphasis added)
 6

NATURE, FREEDOM, ETHICS, AND GOD:

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND
PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT

.. From Logic to Nature to Spirit

The Logic, as such, concludes with the Idea’s comprehending its own
self-comprehension, and thus ceasing to be a mere “content and ob-
ject,” for itself, and becoming instead “science,” which knows itself
(WL 6:572/GW 12:253,13/843). As such, however, it is still “enclosed
within [eingeschlossen in] pure thought” or “subjectivity” (WL 6:572/
GW 12:253,15–19/843). But

when the Idea posits itself as the absolute unity of the pure Concept and
its reality, and thus contracts itself into the immediacy of Being, it is totality
in this form: Nature.
(WL 6:573/GW 12:253,24–27/843)

This positing or contraction, Hegel explains, is not a process of “becom-

ing” or “transition,” like the one that produced “Objectivity” (which
anticipated many features of what we might think of as “nature,” such
as mechanism, “chemism,” and so forth). The pure Idea is already “ab-
solute liberation,” so that it contains “no immediate determination that
isn’t already posited and Concept”; consequently, no “transition” can
occur in it (WL 6:573/GW 12:253,27–32/843). So the right way to de-
scribe what goes on here, Hegel says, is to say that “the Idea freely releases
itself, in absolute self-assurance and resting in itself” (WL 6:573/GW
12:253,38–39/843). In order to be equally free, the form of the result
is the “absolute externality of space and time, existing for itself without
subjectivity” (WL 6:573/GW 12:253,2–4/843).
What kind of “freedom” is this, we might ask, by which something
that is absolutely “external” and lacks all subjectivity comes into being?
In his final sentence, Hegel refers to it as the “initial decision [Entschluss]

268
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 269

of the pure Idea, to determine itself as external Idea” (ibid.; emphasis

added; compare EL §244), which might suggest a certain arbitrariness.
However, Entschluss, which literally means “unclosing,” is in fact simply
the opposite of “enclosed,” eingeschlossen (“within pure thought”), by
which Hegel described the Idea’s state before it releases itself in exter-
nality. So we needn’t be misled by the usual translation of Entschluss as
“decision.” In fact, Hegel thinks that this “free” event is inescapable, and
is already, in effect, accomplished when the Logic returns to its begin-
ning in “the pure immediacy of being” (WL 6:572/GW 12:252,32/842).
In EL §244, he describes the Idea as releasing from itself “the immediate
Idea, itself as Nature” (emphasis altered). To say that there is no “tran-
sition,” no Übergang, between the Idea and Nature, is to say that Nature
is the Idea. But by being “unclosed,” no longer “within” thought, this
Idea is also “the negative of itself” or “external to itself” (EN §247).
Nature is simply the “unclosed” Idea, the Idea that is (“immediately”)
being, rather than being enclosed within thought.
What’s free about the “release” or “unclosing” from thought is that
the pure Idea itself is already “absolute liberation,” completely “posited
and Concept,” and that, consequently, when it is “unclosed” from
thought, its determinacy continues to be completely posited and
Concept, and thus it is just as much “with itself,” just as free, in this
“other” that’s outside thought, as it was when the other was inside
thought (see WL 6:573/GW 12:253,37/843). What’s free about the
result – the “absolute externality of space and time, existing for itself with-
out subjectivity” – is, Hegel says, that insofar as it is “in the Idea,” it
“remains in and for itself the totality of the Concept”:

Insofar as this externality presents itself only in the abstract immediacy of

being and is apprehended from the standpoint of consciousness, it exists
as mere Objectivity and external Life; but in the Idea it remains in and for
itself the totality of the Concept, and science in the relationship of divine
cognition to Nature. But in this decision [Entschluss] of the pure Idea
to determine itself as external Idea, it thereby only posits for itself the
mediation, out of which the Concept ascends as a free existence that has
gone into itself from externality, that completes its self-liberation in the
science of Spirit, and that finds the highest Concept of itself in the science
of Logic as the self-comprehending pure Concept.
(WL 6:573/GW 12:253,4–15/843–844; emphasis added)

If we view the externality of space and time “in the abstract immediacy of
being and . . . from the standpoint of consciousness,” it is merely external;
270 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

but as the Idea, it remains the totality of the Concept, and therefore
free. As we will see in the rest of this chapter, the second and third parts
of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences – that is, his Philosophy of
Nature and Philosophy of Spirit – describe how, out of Nature, the Concept
“ascends as a free existence that has gone into itself from externality,
[and] completes its self-liberation in the science of Spirit.”
Since Nature is the “unclosed” Idea or the Idea that is “external to
itself” (EN §247), it is the Idea; so it is not a falling away from the Idea (as
the “ideal”), still less is it opposed to the Idea. It isn’t an exile from the Idea,
or something anti-divine. If it were any of those things, it could hardly
be expected to accomplish a “self-liberation in the science of Spirit.” If,
as I suggested in my discussion of true infinity in Chapter 3, Nature for
Hegel relates to Spirit as the finite relates to the infinite, then Nature
itself will need to embody the project of “reality” or selfhood that is
fulfilled in Spirit. Seen merely “from the standpoint of consciousness”
(see the last block quote), it doesn’t embody that project; seen, however,
as the Idea – which it is – it does embody that project.1

.. Subjectivity within Nature

In its broad outline, Hegel’s account of Nature recapitulates his ac-
counts of Objectivity and of Life, in the Logic’s Doctrine of the
Concept – only now in the domain of “externality” (EN §247), which ini-
tially takes the form of space and time. As “being alongside one another”
(Außereinander), externality is initially “Mechanics,” including space,
time, place, motion, matter, gravity, impact, and so on. These clearly
expand upon the “Mechanism” that we got to know in Objectivity. As
“particularity,” which is given the title of “Physics” (following Aristotle,

1 Hegel’s former collaborator, F. W. J. Schelling, focussed on Hegel’s conception of the

“creation” of Nature (which I have been analyzing) in his critique of Hegel’s system as a
whole. Schelling argued that Hegel’s “creation” was from an “idea” (namely, the “absolute
Idea”), rather than from an actually existing God, as Christian and Biblical doctrine
require (F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung 1841/42, ed. M. Frank [Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993], p. 133; cited by Christian Iber, Subjektivität, Vernunft und ihre
Kritik [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999], p. 204). Schelling overlooks the fact that
being, existence, and actuality are all features of (that is, superseded in) the absolute
Idea. This is not altered by the fact that the Idea is “enclosed within pure thought”
(WL 6:572/GW 12:253,15/843), since this “thought” is not an activity of anything other
than the Idea. Klaus Brinkmann gives a detailed analysis of Schelling’s critique of Hegel
in “Schellings Hegel-Kritik,” in Klaus Hartmann, ed., Die Ontologische Option (Berlin/New
York: de Gruyter, 1976), pp. 117–210.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 271

for whom physis is the “nature of ” specific kinds of thing), Nature takes
the form of light, the four elements, specific gravity, cohesion, sound,
temperature, form, electricity, and chemistry. These make up a greatly
expanded version of “Chemism.” The final third of Nature, entitled
“Organic Physics,” is geological, vegetable, and animal Life – corre-
sponding, obviously, to “Life,” in the Logic. The relation between these
three stages is that Mechanics exhibits no centering or subjectivity;
Physics, on the other hand, exhibits a degree of organization that
does involve centering or subjectivity, but still in a “hidden” form
(EN §273A); while Organic Physics “shows it as real” (ibid.), in the form
of organic organization. This centering or subjectivity is the Concept,
which arrives at its “reality” in Organic Physics (EN §336A, TWA 9:336).
How is it that Nature exhibits the Concept at all? It does so, just
as Objectivity did (see 5.9, third paragraph), because although it is
“external,” it nevertheless is the Idea, and thus it “remains in and for itself
the totality of the Concept,” as Hegel indicated in the final paragraph
of WL, which I quoted above (second block quote, 6.1).

Nature is to be regarded as a system of levels, of which one emerges

[hervorgeht] necessarily from the other and is the nearest truth of the
one from which it results – which, however, does not mean that the one
is naturally produced by the other, but rather [that it is produced] in the
inner Idea, which makes up Nature’s Ground.
(EN §249)

Since the Nature that Hegel is discussing is not simply matter or electro-
magnetism distributed in space and time, but rather is the Idea (in ex-
ternality to itself), the emergence that interests Hegel is not a sequence
of development over time (through a process of “natural” production),
but the non-temporal emergence of forms that are more in keeping
with the Concept or the Idea – that is, the process by which Nature be-
comes explicitly what it is implicitly (namely, the Concept or the Idea).
This is what Hegel traces from Mechanics through Physics to Organic
Physics. The four elements, specific gravity, electricity, and chemistry
all exhibit a degree of organization or centeredness – Conceptuality –
that the push-and-pull of Mechanics does not; and living things exhibit
still more of it.
Hegel’s treatment of Life, here, differs from his treatment of it in the
Idea in that he adds an explicit treatment of vegetable life, and before
that, of “geological life,” the organization of the Earth as a structure that
is capable of life. This structure elevates itself into the “living organism”
272 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“by virtue of the identity, existing in itself, of its Concept” (EN §342).
As vegetable nature, the “subjectivity” that makes the organic into sin-
gular entities unfolds itself as “a body that is composed of parts that
are different from one another” (EN §343). However, “the part – the
bud, twig, etc. – is also the whole plant” (ibid.); that is, it isn’t function-
ally differentiated to the point where it can’t exist or propagate itself
by itself. In animal life, on the other hand, “true organism” emerges,
“in which the external formation agrees with the Concept in that the
parts are essentially limbs [Glieder, members] and subjectivity exists as
the penetrating one of the whole” (EN §349). The animal organism has
greater unity than the vegetable:
Animal subjectivity consists in the animal’s preserving itself in its bodili-
ness [Leiblichkeit] and in being touched by an external world, and remain-
ing with itself [bei sich selbst] as the universal. Thus the life of the animal,
as this highest point of nature, is the absolute idealism that it has the
determinateness of its bodiliness at the same time in itself, in a perfectly
fluid way – that it incorporates and has incorporated this immediate thing
[dies Unmittelbare] into the subjective.
(EN §350A, 9:430)

The animal is “the universal” in that it imposes a certain order and

unity on all of its parts, limbs, or organs: Its bodily determinateness is
determined by it, “in itself.” Since the animal, in this way, is not reducible
to its bodily parts, but instead is the unifying order that is imposed on
them, it exhibits the “idealistic” pattern that it subjects the “immediate”
(the finite, the merely bodily) to the “subjective” (the infinite, the “soul”
[ibid.]). That is why the animal’s “external formation agrees with the
Concept” (EN §349).
How this unity surpasses that of plants becomes clearer when we read
that “feeling” (Hegel uses Gefühl and Empfindung interchangeably here)
is the animal’s distinguishing characteristic, from which its other dis-
tinctive features – voice, locomotion, animal warmth, and interrupted
intussusception – follow (EN §351). This “feeling” is “the individuality
that, while being determined, is universal to itself, remains simply with
itself, and preserves itself” (ibid.); that is, it is a way of being determined
by what is outside oneself, which doesn’t detract from one’s sense of
oneself, but rather creates and enhances it.
In seeing and hearing I am simply with myself, and it [sc. the seeing and
hearing] is only a form of my transparency and clarity in myself. Because it
has itself as its object, this point-like and yet infinitely determinable thing,
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 273

which remains so unruffled in its simplicity, is the subject as self/self, as

self-feeling. By having feeling, the animal has a theoretical attitude toward the
other, whereas the plant is either indifferent or practical toward what is
outside it. . . . Having feeling, the animal is satisfied in itself, by being modified
by something else.
(EN §351A, 9:432; emphasis added)

This is how the animal in its subjectivity “preserve[s] itself . . . in be-

ing touched by an external world” (EN §350A, 9:430). This capacity
sharply distinguishes the animal from the plant, which has no com-
parable “self-feeling” – no ability to have its selfhood enhanced by its
being determined by what’s outside it – and consequently has nothing
that exists, like the animal’s subjectivity, “as the penetrating one of the
whole” (EN §349).
Hegel goes on to analyze animal functioning under three headings:
Figure (Gestalt), Assimilation, and the Genus-Process. These correspond
to Living Individual, Life-Process, and Genus, in the Idea (see 5.13).
“Assimilation,” perhaps surprisingly, turns out to include “the theoret-
ical process, sensibility” (EN §357), as well as drives, needs, instincts,
and digestion; however, the Life-Process, in the Idea, also included a
passing mention of “feeling” and “sensibility” (WL 6:481/GW 12:188,4–
5/770). What we have just learned about animal “self-feeling” in seeing
and hearing and so forth explains how “theory” as well as “practice” is
a feature of animal functioning and selfhood.
As in the Idea, the living thing’s self-reproduction (through “assimi-
lation”) leads, again, to the end of its “immediacy,” because reproduc-
tion requires a standard of what is the same thing, and because what is
“produced” is clearly no longer simply given, as an immediate datum
(EN §366). What the living thing thereby belongs to and depends
upon will be called the “Genus.” And this Genus immediately involves
division:

The Genus is in one-fold unity, which is-in-itself, with the singularity of

the subject whose concrete substance it is. But the universal is judgment
[Urteil, ‘original division’], so as to become, from this its overt diremp-
tion, a unity that is for itself – to posit itself, as subjective universality, into
existence. . . . Because they have the universal which is not yet subjective,
not yet a subject, as their basis, the moments of the Genus-process are
separated and exist as a number of particular processes, which end in
modes of the death of the living thing.
(EN §367; emphasis added)
274 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

The Genus “divides” so as to be a unity that is for itself: that is, so

that the singular living thing can pursue its unity with the universal. It
divides in several ways: into different species, into two sexes (and par-
ents and children), and into different aspects of the individual. When
the Genus divides itself into different species, each species becomes “for
itself” by “negating” the others, a relationship that creates enmity and
the possibility of violent death (§368). When the Genus divides itself
into different sexes, it creates the possibility of an “affirmative relation-
ship of singularity to itself,” in which “while one individual is opposed
to another, the singularity continues itself in this other and feels itself
in this other” – in mating (Begattung) (EN §369; emphasis added). But
the individuals “have fulfilled their determination in the process of mat-
ing and thus, insofar as they have no higher determination, they head
for death (dem Tode zugehen)” (EN §370). (Note well the qualification:
“insofar as they have no higher determination.”) This is the mode of
death that is appropriate to this second division, into sexes. After pro-
creation, the individual’s life has no further biological point.
Finally, the singular living thing also divides within itself. Sometimes
one of its individual systems or organs, excited by its conflict with some-
thing inorganic and external, “establishes itself for itself and persists
in its particular activity against the activity of the whole”: This is illness
(EN §371). But beyond this transient “inadequacy” of the individual to
the type of functioning required by the Genus, there is also a

universal inadequacy . . . that the individual has, in that its Idea is the imme-
diate one, that it stands as an animal within nature, and that its subjectivity
is the Concept only in itself, but not for itself. Consequently the inner uni-
versality remains a negative power over against the natural singularity of
the living thing, a power from which it experiences violence and perishes,
because its determinate being as such does not itself have this universality in it-
self, and thus is not the reality corresponding to it. . . . [This] inadequacy
to universality is [the animal’s] original illness and the inborn seed of death.
(EN §§374, 375; emphasis added)

Indeed, the individual “itself kills itself,” because in its effort to “build”
its singularity “into” universality, it makes itself abstract, immediate, and
a “habit that lacks process” (EN §375).
The living thing’s “inner universality remains a negative power”
against its natural singularity “because its determinate being as such
does not have this universality in itself, and thus is not the reality cor-
responding to it.” The living being has an inner universality, but that
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 275

universality is not in its determinate being (its Dasein), and so its determi-
nate being is not the reality that would correspond to its inner universal-
ity. What reality would correspond to its inner universality? The reality,
of course, of Spirit, of “the Concept . . . that has the reality correspond-
ing to it, the Concept, as its determinate being” (EN §376; emphasis
altered).
What this means is that Nature’s “inner universality” can’t find a re-
ality that corresponds to it in mere living things, as such. That is why
these things keep dying – through violent conflict with other species, or
through the pointlessness of being something that has already repro-
duced itself, or by becoming a mere “habit that lacks process” – that lacks
what we might call the “full presence” of universality. Conflict with other
species may prolong the life of one’s own species; procreation does so
insofar as it creates a new generation; and making one’s functioning
as universal as possible (“building it into the universal”) may make it
indefinitely reproducible. But none of these creates that full presence,
and in that sense none of them constitutes a determinate being that cor-
responds to Nature’s “inner universality.” The indefinite prolongation
that each of these three tactics achieves is, in each case, a spurious infin-
ity, a “progress to infinity,” rather than the presence (the Dasein) that is
true infinity.2 It’s only when the Concept, rather than the living thing as
such, is the determinate being – it’s only when Spirit (theoretical and
practical: soul, consciousness, intellect, freedom, ethics, art, religion,
and philosophy) comes on the scene – that Nature’s inner universality
acquires a determinate being that corresponds to it.
Has Hegel proven that “nature” or “life” in the everyday senses of
those words are “inadequate” without Spirit? Only if we understand his
proof as including his argument from “reality” to true infinity. As Hegel
mentioned at the end of the WL and as I explained at the end of 6.1, it is
possible to view nature purely from the standpoint of “consciousness,”
in which case it has no “inner universality,” but is simply external. But
the Nature and the Life that Hegel has been analyzing in the EN aren’t

2 Michael Wolff interprets Hegel’s account of natural death, in EN §375, as deriving natural
death directly from his description of the animal’s “form [Gestalt]-process,” in EN §356,
in which Hegel says that the organism “makes its own members into its inorganic nature,
feeds on itself ” (Michael Wolff, Das Körper-Seele-Problem. Kommentar zu Hegel, Enzyklopädie
(1830), §389 [Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1992], p. 135). This interpretation
doesn’t explain specifically what Hegel means by “habit that lacks process,” in §375;
nor does it bring out the way in which all four forms of death seem to involve spurious
infinities.
276 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

viewed merely from the standpoint of consciousness, but from that of

the Idea (because in order to be “real,” in the sense defined in “Being,”
Nature needs to embody the project of “reality” or selfhood that led us
to true infinity, the Concept, and the Idea), and from that standpoint,
Nature and Life have an inner universality, the “Concept,” that needs
a corresponding reality, which only Spirit – in which the Concept is its
own reality or object (EN §376, EG §381) – can provide.

.. Spirit
How can the Concept be its own reality or object? In EG §381, Hegel
describes Spirit as “the Idea that has arrived at its being-for-self.” Being-
for-self, we remember, was a being that “transcends otherness, its con-
nection and community with other, has repelled them and made ab-
straction from them” (WL 5:175/GW 21:145,34–36/158). So the Idea
that has arrived at its being-for-self is the Idea that has repelled or
abstracted from Nature’s “otherness,” which is Nature’s being-outside-
itself (EN §§247, 254). In this Idea, which is Spirit, the Concept is
its own reality or object because it has repelled or abstracted from its
being-outside-itself – from everything that is other than itself – so the
only thing that remains that can be its reality or its object is itself.
Thus, the essence of Spirit, Hegel says, is freedom, “the Concept’s
absolute negativity as identity with itself,” part of which is its ability to ab-
stract from everything external, “even from its determinate being,” and
to bear “the negation of its individual immediacy, to bear infinite pain”
(EG §382). Hegel designates this ability as Spirit’s abstract “universal-
ity” (ibid.), and goes on to say that “as being-for-itself, [this] universal
particularizes itself and is identical with itself in doing so” (EG §383).
This pattern of abstracting, particularizing, and maintaining identity
through the particularizing, is, of course, the same pattern of univer-
sal, particular, and singularity, or of being “with oneself in the other”
(that is, in the particularity), that Hegel laid out in the Doctrine of the
Concept and will hark back to again (as I described in 5.7) in §§5–7 of
the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right. The resulting “determinate-
ness of Spirit” he describes, accordingly, as “manifestation” (EG §383),
the same term that he had employed in introducing the Concept
(WL 6:239/GW 11:408–409,16–6/570–571; see 4.17), and which he
treats as equivalent to “revelation” (das Offenbaren, EG §§383–384).
Spirit, Hegel says, “does not reveal something; rather, its determinate-
ness and content is this revealing itself” (EG §383). That is, what Spirit
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 277

“reveals” is its revealing, which is itself. And its revealing is its freedom,
its particularizing of itself while remaining identical with itself. So here,
once again, Hegel uses a theological term (“revelation,” das Offenbaren)
to describe something that may not coincide exactly with what tradi-
tional theology has in mind, when it speaks of “revelation,” but that
nevertheless doesn’t coincide with any merely “secular” concept either.
Once again, Hegel is trying to pin down a core of truth that can be
found in traditional theology and to separate it from its untrue, “spuri-
ously infinite” environment. He tells us here that the coming-into-being
(Werden) of Nature itself from the “abstract Idea,” as described at the
end of WL, was a “revelation,” but “as a revelation of the Spirit that is
free,” here at the beginning of EG, revelation is “the positing of Nature as
its [Spirit’s] world – a positing that, as reflection, is at the same time the
positing in advance of the world as an independent Nature” (EG §384;
emphasis added; see 4.8 on “positing in advance”).
But this “reflection,” in which Nature is posited “in advance” as inde-
pendent of Spirit, is, of course, not Hegel’s final word. Just as reflection
and Essence were superseded, in the Logic, by the Concept, in which
positing and positing in advance were no longer opposed to one an-
other, so here Nature is ultimately subsumed within the “eternally self-
producing unity of Spirit’s objectivity and its ideality or its Concept . . . –
Absolute Spirit” (EG §385), in which Spirit “understands itself as itself
positing being, as itself producing its other, Nature, and finite Spirit,
so that this other loses all shine of independence with respect to Spirit,
ceases altogether to be a limitation for it, and appears only as a means
by which Spirit attains absolute being-for-self” (EG §384A, 10:31/19).
To find this sort of “creationism” plausible, we must, of course, find
Hegel’s initial argument plausible, in the “Quality” chapter of WL, that
it is only through the infinite that the finite achieves (full) “reality.”
Spirit, and Absolute Spirit in particular, is the ultimate articulation of
this infinite.
In pursuit of this final absoluteness or infinity, in which Spirit will un-
derstand itself as itself producing Nature and finite Spirit, Spirit passes
through (as usual) two preliminary stages – each of which is limited by
the other, and thus finite. The first stage is “subjective Spirit,” in which
Spirit presents itself to itself naively as something immediately present
(and similar, in that way, to Being or to Nature, as they initially pre-
sented themselves). And the second stage is “objective Spirit,” in which
Spirit presents itself instead as “a world produced, and to be produced,
by Spirit” (EG §385).
278 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

Subjective Spirit will include such things as feeling, habit, con-

sciousness, self-consciousness, representations, thought, and practical
thought. Objective Spirit, by contrast, will include things like property,
contract, wrong, good and evil, family, civil society, the state, and world
history. The “subjective” items are all apparently given to us imme-
diately, as things of whose presence we can be directly aware. The
“objective” ones, on the other hand, are more likely to present them-
selves to us as things that we produce or ought to produce. In that sense,
they make up a “reality” or a “world” that is set over against us, its pro-
ducers. In contrast to the “subjective” items, we might call the objective
ones “artificial” – that is, made by us. Hegel will argue, however, that
they are just as indispensable to Spirit’s freedom, and thus to Spirit
itself, as the subjective items are: that Spirit must take these external,
“objective” forms, in order to be itself. And by the same token, he will
argue that the “subjective” items – feeling, habit, consciousness, and so
on – are themselves not simply “given,” but rather are things that Spirit
as freedom must produce, ways in which it must manifest itself, in order
to be itself, to be freedom. By these two lines of argument, Hegel will
dismantle the apparent contrast between the “subjective” Spirit and the
“objective” Spiritual “world,” showing that both of Spirit’s “wings” (so
to speak) are necessary manifestations of freedom. Thus, neither wing
will have the sheer givenness that being or nature or a particular thought
or social institution initially seems to have – they will both turn out to
be necessary manifestations of freedom. But neither will they be arbitrary
products – whatever we “feel like” producing; on the contrary, they will
be necessary manifestations of freedom. Absolute Spirit, which mani-
fests itself as art, religion, and philosophy, will then be the integration
of these inner and outer, “subjective” and “objective” domains, an inte-
gration that’s made possible by the understanding (which is shared, in
different ways, by all three manifestations of Absolute Spirit) that both
of these domains are necessary manifestations of freedom.
By integrating mutual “outsideness,” the sheer logical disconnected-
ness of space and time, with the logical connectedness of the Concept –
which Spirit does by extending the increasing centeredness or connect-
edness of “Physics,” chemistry, and Life into its own being-for-self or ab-
straction from “outsideness” – Spirit integrates Nature with Logic (with
“God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of Nature . . . ”
[WL 5:44/GW 21:34,39–2/50]). By integrating the more “natural” fea-
tures of Spirit’s own existence (feeling, habit, consciousness, and so
on) with its more “artificial” features (property, wrong, the state, and so
on), Absolute Spirit then eliminates the remaining finitude within Spirit,
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 279

which is its division into these mutually opposed domains, and thus con-
summates Spirit’s integration of disconnectedness with connectedness,
through a true infinity – which is “true,” as usual, insofar as it is the
self-superseding of all of the finite stages that went before it.

.. Subjective Spirit: “Soul”

The form that Spirit takes immediately is its most “natural” form,
which Hegel entitles “Soul” (Seele), and also “Natural Spirit” (Naturgeist)
(EG §387). The study of this topic he entitles – confusingly for us –
“Anthropology” (Anthropologie). As Michael Wolff suggests, Hegel may
be borrowing this term from Kant’s Critique of Judgment, §89, in which
Kant contrasts with “rational psychology” (the Leibniz-Wolff doctrine of
the immortal soul) a more modest “anthropology of the internal sense,
a knowledge, that is to say, of our thinking self as alive” (KU 461).3
Hegel does not necessarily mean to imply that everything that he stud-
ies under this heading is distinctively human, rather than belonging to
a wider range of animals.
“Soul” is exemplified in (1) what our life shares with that of the planet
in general: climates, seasons, times of day; (2) distinctive racial and na-
tional characteristics; (3) the temperament of smaller groups and of
individuals; (4) the characteristic contrasts between youth, adulthood,
and old age, between male and female, and between sleeping and wak-
ing; and (5) feeling, self-feeling, and habit. To begin with, the “soul” is
completely passive; it simply undergoes the effect of its climate, race,
and so on. But that doesn’t mean that it regards them as external to itself;
a person may well regard her race or her temperament as part of (as we
say) “who she is.” From the individual’s temperament, Hegel proceeds to
differences, and thus to changes, within the individual’s life. The first of
these are the sequential changes of the “ages of man.” Hegel interprets
these as changes in the individual’s relation to the “Genus,” arguing
that in youth, the individual is opposed, by his ideals, hopes, and so
on, to the world that the Genus represents, whereas in adulthood, the
individual “recognizes [that world’s] objective necessity and rational-
ity,” and in old age he “accomplishes unity with this objectivity” (EG
§396). The opposition, then, isn’t really between the individual and
something else; it is an opposition of the individual “against himself ”

3 Michael Wolff, Das Körper-Seele-Problem. Kommentar zu Hegel, Enzyklopädie (1830), §389,

p. 31.
280 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

(EG §397; emphasis added), so that, Hegel says, “he seeks and finds
himself in an other individual; – the sexual relationship” (ibid.).
Here, Hegel harks back to his earlier analyses of the sexual relation-
ship, in “Life,” in the WL, and in “The Animal Organism,” in the EN.
The individual is “against himself,” according to “Life,” in that his self-
reproduction according to the standard embodied in the Genus (see
5.14) creates a tension that puts him at odds with his merely particular
existence. Here, Hegel presents this tension initially as the theme of the
diachronic “ages of man,” and then describes it as being played out syn-
chronically in the individual’s need to “find himself” in a relationship
to another individual, where this “finding” is again, as it was in “Life,”
the first – and only the first – way in which the individual’s going beyond
himself allows him to find himself (to resolve the tension between the
Genus and his merely particular existence).
This relationship leads to a contrast – Hegel calls it a “natural differ-
ence” (Naturunterschied) – between a passive side that “remains united
with itself in the feeling of ethics, love, and so on,” and an active side
that produces unity by working through the opposition between univer-
sal interests and personal ones (EG §397). Hegel alludes to the “family”
as embodying this natural contrast, and no doubt he has in mind an
idealized bourgeois family such as he describes later in the Philosophy of
Right, in which the husband deals with the external, “universal” world
while the wife sees to the family’s internal harmony. Being aware of the
variety of sexual divisions of labor in nature as well as in human soci-
eties, we can presumably agree, today, that these two functions need to
be performed, without assuming that either function will necessarily be
the sole or even the primary responsibility of one party or the other. As
far as I can see, neither Hegel’s previous nor his subsequent argument
depends upon the assumption (which he unmistakeably does make)
that each function will be performed solely or at least primarily by one
sex and by one individual within each sexual relationship – though we
might well think (in Hegel’s partial defense) that at any given moment,
in a particular relationship, one partner is likely to be performing one
function to a greater degree than the other partner, and vice versa for
the other function.
Hegel’s next step is to identify the division (which emerged in the sex-
ual relationship) of individuality into a “for itself” aspect and a merely
existing, “in itself” aspect, as the soul’s “awakening,” in contrast to its
“sleep” (EG §398). While literal waking and sleep are successive, al-
ternating states – a circumstance that Hegel identifies as an “infinite
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 281

progression” – their relationship is in fact summed up “affirmatively”

(that is, as a true infinity) in sensation (Empfindung) (EG §399). This
is because sensation combines the multiple determinatenesses of the
waking world with the universality of the sleeping self, or the “being”
of the sleeping self with the “being-for-self” of the waking self:

The sentient soul places the manifold within itself and thus removes the
opposition between its being-for-self or subjectivity and its immediacy or
substantial being-in-itself – not, however, as this was done in the relapse
from the waking state into sleep, when its being-for-self made way for its op-
posite, the mere being-in-itself. On the contrary, its being-for-self preserves,
develops, and proves itself in the alteration, in the other.
(EG §399A; 10:96/72; emphasis added)

Here, as is appropriate for a true infinity, we have precisely the standard

formula for freedom: being “with oneself in the other.” In this way,
“sensation” already embodies the pattern that will be fundamental for
Spirit as such. Hegel’s point is that in sensation, the soul is aware of
itself as experiencing the sensation, and in that sense, there is already
a going beyond the sensation’s immediacy as something that merely
happens. It happens to someone. Thus the emergence of this germ of
“subjectivity” or selfhood from the passive “natural soul” that Hegel has
been discussing up to this point (EG §§391–402) follows precisely the
pattern by which “negativity” yielded the “beginning of the Subject” in
the Something, and spurious infinity yielded true infinity, in the WL:
Like the original negation of “quality” by its other, and the self-repeating
negation of the finite by the spurious infinity, both the simple negation
of sleep by awakening, and their endless alternation, are overcome by
a second negation in which the one (whether it be the Something, the
true infinity, the awakening, or the Subject) takes the other into itself,
while nevertheless preserving itself in so doing.4

4 Thus I think Iring Fetscher is mistaken when he regards Hegel’s use of the image
of the “lightning-stroke of subjectivity breaking through the form of Spirit’s immedi-
acy” (EG §398A; 10:90/67) as perhaps acknowledging that Hegel hasn’t been able to
fully explain the emergence of “awakening” and of the subjectivity that it inaugurates
(I. Fetscher, Hegel’s Lehre vom Menschen. Kommentar zu den §§387 bis 482 der Enzyklopädie
der Philosophischen Wissenschaften [Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1970],
p. 49). The division of for-itself and in-itself in the sexual relationship, deriving from
the tension between particularity and the Genus that emerged in the “ages of man,”
seems to me to be an effective explanation of the emergence of subjectivity, when it is
read in the context of the WL’s accounts of Life and Cognition, Essence and the Concept,
and the “beginning of the Subject” in negativity and true infinity.
282 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

This aspect of sensation emerges more explicitly as feeling, in the

“feeling soul” (fühlende Seele) (EG §§402–403). “Feeling” is less purely
passive than simple sensation; it is how one feels, all the feelings that one
has. Ultimately it yields a division between particular feelings, on the
one hand, and the subject that has them, on the other. Hegel refers to
this “subject” as “self-feeling” (EG §407). He takes somnambulism and
hypnotic states as instances of feeling without any self-feeling attached
(EG §406), and madness (Verrücktheit) as a state of mind in which self-
feeling exists, but is confined to a particular feeling, rather than ranging
over and organizing all of them (EG §408). Habit (Gewohnheit), on the
other hand,

reduces the particulars of feelings (and of consciousness as well) to a mere

feature of its being. In this way the soul has the content in its possession,
and contains it in such a way that the soul is not in these determinations
as sensing, nor as distinguishing itself from them in a relationship, nor
sunken in them, but has them and moves in them, without sensation or
consciousness of the fact. It is free from them, insofar as it is not inter-
ested in or occupied with them; and while it exists in these forms as its
possession, it is at the same time open to be otherwise active and engaged,
whether with sensation or with spiritual consciousness in general.
(EG §410; 10:183–184/140; emphasis added)

Habit is produced by repetition and practice. It is like nature (and con-

sequently has been called a “second nature”) in that it is “mechanical”
and an “immediate being” of the soul (EG §410R; 10:184/141), but it is
liberating insofar as it creates the broader possibilities mentioned in the
block quote. It operates in three main ways: by a hardening against exter-
nal sensations (Hegel mentions cold, heat, sweet tastes, and so on); by
a familiarity with the satisfaction of a drive, which makes additional sat-
isfaction of the same kind less attractive; and by the habituation of skill,
in which practice enables the soul to subject the body and the world, as
its instruments, to itself (EG §410R; 10:185–186/141–142). Through
all of these, the subject asserts itself over against its contents. Hegel’s
rubric for this assertion of the subject is “actual soul,” for which the
body is an externality that “represents not itself, but the soul, of which
it is the sign” (EG §411). Examples of this “sign” activity are the human
upright posture, the functioning of the hand and of the mouth, with
its laughter and weeping, and “the note of spirituality diffused over the
whole, which at once announces the body as the externality of a higher
nature” (ibid.).
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 283

This assertion of the Subject ultimately carries with it a “division”

(Urteil) in which “the ‘I’ excludes from itself the sum total of its merely
natural determinations as an object, a world external to it, and relates
to that world in such a way that in it, the ‘I’ is immediately reflected in
itself” – the relationship of Consciousness (EG §412).

.. Subjective Spirit: “Consciousness”

Because Consciousness is the way in which Spirit “appears” (as opposed
to its natural being, in the Soul, and its Truth, as Spirit proper), its study
is called “phenomenology.” There is, in fact, an extensive parallelism
between the EG’s “phenomenology of spirit,” which is its study of Con-
sciousness (in the broadest sense), and the first three sections of Hegel’s
original Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).
As a stage of appearance, Consciousness is a stage of “reflection” or
of “relation” (see 4.13 on “appearance” and the “essential relation”),
and as a stage of “relation” it is, “like relation in general, the contradic-
tion between the self-standingness of the two sides, and their identity,
in which they are superseded” (EG §414). This contradiction is that
“alongside the abstract certainty that Spirit has [in Consciousness] of
being ‘with itself’ [bei sich selber], it has the precisely opposite certainty
of relating to something that is essentially other than itself” (EG §416A).
Spirit, in Consciousness, is certain of being ‘with itself’ (or ‘at home’),
because Consciousness is a development, as we have seen, of Spirit’s es-
sential freedom (EG §382; see 6.3). But because, at the same time, the
‘I’ in Consciousness “excludes from itself the sum total of its merely natu-
ral determinations as an object, a world external to it” (EG §412; emphasis
added), it is also certain of relating to something that is essentially other
than itself, and thus of not being ‘with itself.’ Hegel describes Kant and
Fichte as entangled in this contradiction, and Spinoza as avoiding it only
by lacking the notion of free subjectivity in the first place (EG §415R).
Spirit’s goal in its stage of Consciousness, Hegel says, is to “make . . . its
appearance identical with its essence – to raise its self-certainty” (whose
contradictory nature we have just been describing) “to truth” (EG §416;
emphasis added) – that is, to the state in which its “reality is in accord
with its Concept” (WL 6:265/GW 12:26,10/593), as a self-contradictory
reality, like this one, cannot be.
The stages of this elevation of certainty to truth are:

a. Consciousness in general, which has an object [Gegenstand] as such.

284 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

b. Self-consciousness, for which ‘I’ is the object.

c. The unity of Consciousness and Self-consciousness, in which Spirit
views the object’s content as itself, and itself as determined in and
for itself: Reason, the Concept of Spirit. (EG §417)

Consciousness in general, or as such, being “immediate,” conceives of

its object as “a being, Something, an existing thing, a singular, and
so forth”: as something external to Consciousness (EG §418). These
concepts are all “logical determinations” (EG §419), and thus Con-
sciousness isn’t engaged in mere sensual receptivity: It is “perceiving,”
wahrnehmend, “taking to be true” (EG §420), combining singular things
with universality in a way that Hegel describes as containing, in fact, “the
contradiction of the finite” (EG §421) – presumably because this uni-
versality goes beyond the singularity in the same way that the “limit”
went beyond the Something, pointing ultimately toward the infinite
(see 3.6–3.7).
The contradiction that he found in “perception” is resolved, Hegel
says, by understanding the manifold determinations of the sensible as
“the appearance of an inner that is for itself” (EG §422A). This “inner”
is described as “force” and “cause,” and ultimately as “law” (ibid.). This
“law” relates determinations that aren’t distinguished as “external” to
each other; instead, each one “lies immediately in the other,” so that
their “inner difference” is in fact “the difference that is not a difference ”
(EG §423). Here we can recall the way in which the absence of selfhood
in the multiplicity of Something and other, and of finite things, was over-
come by the “ought” and infinity (3.7), which resolved the differences
within that multiplicity into a higher selfhood and unity (as, indeed,
“difference” itself was resolved into the higher unity of Ground, via
Diversity, Opposition, and Contradiction [4.10–4.12]). Hegel’s point is
that the “object” that Consciousness is trying to comprehend as such
encounters the same problems of selfhood that determinate being
and its successors encountered in “Quality” in the WL (“precisely by
excluding others from itself, the singular content relates itself to oth-
ers, and proves . . . to have others in itself” [EG §419A]), and that as
in “Quality,” so here also, the only way to resolve these problems is
for the manifold determinations of the sensible to go beyond them-
selves into a higher unity in the manner of “negativity,” “true infinity,”
or the Concept. The resulting “difference that is not a difference,”
Hegel entitles “Self-consciousness,” because it achieves selfhood, but
without giving up the relation between ‘I’ and object that constituted
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 285

Consciousness: It is just that this relation is now between the ‘I’ and
itself (as its own object).

6.5.1 Self-Consciousness, “Recognition,” and Reason. The formula for Self-

consciousness, Hegel says, “is ‘I = I.’ Thus it is without reality, since it
itself, which is its object, is not an object, because no difference is present
between the object and itself” (EG §424; emphasis added). The initial,
“abstract Self-consciousness is the first negation of Consciousness, and
consequently is also burdened with an external object, or formally with
the negation of itself; thus it is . . . the contradiction between its being
Self-consciousness and its being Consciousness” (EG §425; emphasis
added). Self-consciousness in its initial, “abstract” phase is “burdened
with an external object,” I suggest, in the sense that it is still trying to be
consciousness of an “object”; but since “no difference is present between
the object and itself,” it can’t be an “object” for itself; so this structure
of Consciousness and object is a “burden” – indeed, a contradiction –
for it.
This contradiction can only be resolved, Hegel says, by a dual pro-
cess, in which abstract Self-consciousness “gives content and objectiv-
ity to its abstract knowledge of itself, and in reverse . . . supersedes the
given objectivity and posits it as identical with itself” (ibid.). To un-
derstand this dual process, it may be helpful to remember the dual
process by which the spurious infinite became true infinity. Like “ab-
stract Self-consciousness,” the spurious infinity was the first negation
of what went before it (in its case, of the finite), and consequently it
failed to be truly infinite (since it was still bounded and limited by
the finite that it negated). Similarly, abstract Self-consciousness still
involves an external object, or Consciousness, which prevents it from
really being Self-consciousness. Spurious infinity overcame its contradic-
tion through a dual process, in which (1) it superseded itself (“infinity”
as the negation of the finite) by understanding itself not as something
independent, but as the self-supersession of the finite, and (2) it su-
perseded the finite by understanding it not as something independent
but as something that achieves reality only by superseding itself, in
the infinite. The resulting true infinity no longer opposed the finite
to the infinite, but rather showed their mutual interdependence. Ab-
stract Self-consciousness, similarly, overcomes its contradiction through
the dual process of (1) treating itself not as abstract, but as having
“content and objectivity,” and (2) treating the “given objectivity” not as
given to it, but as identical with itself. The parallels with the two aspects
286 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

of the supersession of spurious infinity are evident. Like true infinity,

the resulting concrete Self-consciousness will embody what was true in
both of the prior stages (in this case, Consciousness and abstract Self-
consciousness), while omitting the abstract opposition between them.
Hegel spells this process out in three stages: “desire” (Begierde),
the “process of recognition” (of Anerkennung), and “universal Self-
consciousness.” “Desire” is the singular Self-consciousness that is “sim-
ply self-identical but at the same time, in contradiction to this, re-
lated to an external object” (EG §425A, 10:215). Because abstract
Self-consciousness, not being different from itself, can’t be an object
for itself, it postulates an object that, however, exists only in order to
demonstrate its own nothingness and Self-consciousness’s objectivity.
Through its “activity” (Tätigkeit), in gobbling up the external object
(EG §427, 427A), “desire” demonstrates the object’s nothingness and
its own objectivity (as capable of gobbling up objects). This satisfaction
is purely temporary, however; with the disappearance of the first ob-
ject, the need for another one arises. This is the familiar frustrating
“infinite progress” (EG §428A). However, “as the negation of immediacy
and of singularity,” this process of “desire” results in “the determination
of universality and of the identity of Self-consciousness with its object”
(EG §429). The process negates immediacy and singularity because it
makes the subject dependent on the object that it consumes, and vice
versa; this creates “universality” by relating Self-consciousness to innu-
merable independent objects, with which it is “identical” (through their
mutual dependence, the one eating, the others being eaten), while still
being superior to them – and thus “universal” – by functioning, in their
relationship, as the “activity” (as the one that does the eating). This
universality, Hegel says, then undergoes a “judgment,” an “original di-
vision” (Urteil), through “the consciousness of a free object, in which
‘I’ has the knowledge of itself as ‘I,’ but which is also still outside it”
(EG §429; emphasis added) – this being, of course, the primal scene of
“recognition.”
Why does this “division” happen? It happens because insofar as Self-
conscious is “universal,” it needs (as in the Concept) to particularize it-
self in a plurality of particular Self-consciousnesses. Ultimately, this need
for particularization can be traced back, as usual, to the pattern whereby
true infinity has to be the self-supersession of finite things. The “univer-
sal,” likewise, has to be the self-supersession of distinct particulars. So
when Self-consciousness as “desire” (with its dependence on an endless
succession of objects on which to demonstrate their nothingness and
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 287

its own objectivity) emerges as a “universal,” vis-à-vis those objects, its

relation to them is transformed: They must become “free objects,” so as
to be capable of the self-supersession by which a “universal,” as such, is
constituted.5
Being free objects, however, they must be recognizable as free. This,
of course, is the next problem:

A Self-consciousness is for a Self-consciousness [compare PhG §177] ini-

tially only immediately, as an other for an other. In him, as I, I contemplate
myself, but I also contemplate in him an immediately existing [daseiend]
other object which, as ‘I,’ is absolutely self-standing in relation to me. The
supersession of Self-consciousness’s singularity was the first supersession;
it is determined thereby only as a particular. This contradiction generates
the drive to show oneself as a free self and to be present [da zu sein] for
the other as a free self – the process of recognition.
(EG §430)

If Self-consciousness is “determined . . . only as a particular,” it is not

determined as going beyond itself – as free. But as a “free object” (§429),
it must be determined as free. To be determined in this way, Hegel
proposes, it must be “present for the other as a free self,” through
“recognition” (§430).
The “process of recognition,” Hegel says, is a “struggle ” in which I
need to supersede the immediacy of the other, and my own immediacy
as well (§431), in order to show that I or we go beyond our immediacy,
in freedom. This struggle “is a matter of life and death” (§432), since
“the absolute proof of freedom, in the struggle for recognition, is death”
(§432A). If one was willing to risk death, it is clear that one was free.
However, “life is just as essential as freedom” (§433; emphasis added),
because one gets no recognition from a dead person and because “life
is the determinate being [Dasein] of one’s freedom” (§432). Conse-
quently, the struggle for recognition ends, initially, with a “one-sided”

5 A parallel reading of §175 (TWA 3:143) of the Phenomenology of Spirit might go a long way
toward unlocking that mysterious and crucial transition. This passage, EG §429, explains
how Self-consciousness in general relates, for Hegel, to particular Self-consciousnesses.
In Chapter 5, note 24, I pointed out how Hegel’s parallel account of the “doubling” of
the individual, and its “identity with the other individual,” in Life and in the absolute Idea
(5.14 and 5.17), provides his answer to Michael Inwood’s and Willem deVries’s question
of how Hegel thinks that the pure thoughts that constitute the absolute Idea relate to the
pure thoughts that constitute an individual ‘I.’ In both the Idea and EG §429, I suggest,
Hegel’s most fundamental thought is the one that I stated in the text: that the “universal”
(that is, the infinite) has to be the self-supersession of distinct particulars (that is, finites).
288 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

solution in which one party gives up his demand for recognition (so
as to be assured of remaining alive), and recognition flows in only one
direction, from the one who gave up his demand to the one who did not.
This is the “relationship of master and bondsman” (Herr und Knecht)
(§433).
Hegel identifies two aspects of this relationship. On the one hand,
since the master’s “means,” the bondsman, must also be kept alive, the
sheer destruction of the object is now replaced by a sharing of needs
and of the far-sighted provision for satisfying them. Hegel calls this
sharing a “form of universality” (§434). On the other hand, the differ-
ence between the two protagonists has the result that in serving the
master, the bondsman “works off his singular and personal will, super-
sedes the inner immediacy of desire,” and thus finds the “beginning
of wisdom in the fear of the lord” (or “master”: Herr), and makes the
transition to “universal Self-consciousness” (§435). Both through the
sharing of needs and through the “discipline that breaks his personal
will” (§435A, 10:225) (where this personal will, Eigenwille, is equiva-
lent to what Hegel elsewhere calls “arbitrariness,” Willkür [see 5.7]),
the bondsman becomes capable of taking the broader perspective of
“universal Self-consciousness,” which is

the affirmative knowledge of himself in the other self, each of which,

as free singularity, has absolute self-standingness, but – as a result of the
negation of its immediacy or desire – does not differentiate itself from the
other, is universal and objective and has real universality and reciprocity
[Gegenseitigkeit] in such a way that it knows itself as recognized in the free
other and knows this insofar as it recognizes the other and knows it to be
free.
(EG §436; emphasis added)

Hegel identifies this vision as “the form of the consciousness of the

substance of all essential spirituality, of the family, fatherland, the State,
as well as of all virtues, love, friendship, bravery, honor, fame” (though
not of honor without content, vain fame, and so forth) (§436R).
In the lectures that are quoted in the Additions, Hegel explains that
the master, too, proceeds to “universal Self-consciousness” because “the
master who stood over against the bondsman was not yet truly free, since
he did not yet entirely see himself in the other. Consequently, it is only
through the bondsman’s becoming free that the master too becomes
completely free” (§436A; compare §435A). The master needs to “see
himself in the other,” we can interpret, because one can “be present
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 289

for the other as a free self” (§430) only insofar as the other is capable
of appreciating freedom, which is only to the extent that the other is
capable of being free. So the master needs to see and relate to that ca-
pacity, in the other, in order to be present for the other in the way that –
according to the argument of §430 – he needs to be present.
It is important to realize that Hegel does not say, and his argument
does not demonstrate, that the master needs to be “recognized” as
free by any actual being in order to be free. What Hegel does say and
demonstrate is that the master needs to “be present for the other as
a free self,” and that in order to be present in this way, he needs to
recognize the other’s capacity for freedom (since he can’t “be present”
as free to an other who isn’t capable of freedom and therefore isn’t
capable of appreciating freedom in him). This seems to be the natural
interpretation of Hegel’s statement that each free self “knows itself as
recognized in the free other . . . insofar as it recognizes the other and knows
it to be free” (EG §436; emphasis added). It knows itself as recognized
“in” the other – not, note well, “by” the other – only in that, and to
the extent that, it recognizes the other. Thus, contrary to what is often
suggested, Hegel’s argument for mutual recognition does not make
anything a “social construct.” What freedom requires, according to the
“recognition” argument in the Philosophy of Spirit, is not membership
in a mutual-congratulation club, but willingness to accept objectively
qualified others into the club that one wants to belong to, objectively,
oneself.6

6 Thus, the argument that I have analyzed does not support Robert Brandom’s conclusion
that a person “is free insofar as he is one of us. There is no objective fact of the mat-
ter concerning his freedom to which we can appeal beyond the judgment of our own
community. . . . On this view, then, man is not objectively free” (“Freedom and Constraint
by Norms,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 [1979], p. 192). Certainly freedom, for
Hegel, is not “objective” in the same way that rocks and tables are objective, but it is or
can be “objective” in the way that Hegel himself uses that word, in the WL and the EG
(see 5.9 and 6.7, respectively); and Hegel’s account of “recognition” is precisely about
how we can be “conscious” of freedom, in our Gegenstand, as well as being “self-conscious”
of it (cf. EG §417 and §437). Brandom’s later statement that for Hegel, “to be a self . . . is
to be taken or treated as one by those one takes or treats as one; to be recognized by
those one recognizes” (Tales of the Mighty Dead. Historical Essays on the Metaphysics of Inten-
tionality [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002], pp. 216 – 217), doesn’t seem
to be supported by Hegel’s EG account of recognition, either. Nor, turning to another
commentator, does Hegel’s recognition argument in the EG support anything like what
Michael N. Forster calls the “enduring community consensus theory of truth . . . according
to which the very nature of truth is such that it is necessary and sufficient for a claim’s truth
that it be agreed upon and continue to be agreed upon by a community or a communal
tradition” (Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
290 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

In “universal Self-consciousness” we see Hegel’s version of Kant’s

“kingdom of ends,” but Hegel’s version differs from Kant’s in that Hegel
has derived the mutual recognition of the two parties from their shared
relationship to Self-consciousness as such, through the particularization
of the universal, and thus from a “concrete” conception of freedom (as
in the Concept and the Idea [see 5.17], and in true infinity), rather
than – as Kant unsuccessfully tried to derive it – from the mere form of
freedom (see 2.7). “Concreteness” succeeds where Kantian abstraction
failed, because in “concreteness,” the reality of the parties depends upon
their self-transcendence into the universal Self-consciousness of which
they are the particularization, so that their relation to each other, in that
particularization, must be in keeping with that dependence, whereas in
Kantian abstraction, the independent reality of finite individuals, as
such, doesn’t depend upon their infinite autonomy, and consequently
their mutual relations, as finite, don’t have to be in keeping with that
autonomy.
The effect of this particularization of the universal, as I explained,
is not to make the particular Self-consciousnesses dependent upon the
recognition that they may or may not actually receive from other Self-
consciousnesses, but to make them dependent on their own attitude
toward those others: they are Self-consciousnesses, and free, “insofar as
they recognize the other and know it to be free” – that is, insofar as they
willingly take part in (recognize that they are particularizations of) the
universal Self-consciousness.
Hegel describes this “universal Self-consciousness” as a “unity of Con-
sciousness and Self-consciousness” (§437) because in it, “Spirit views
the content of the object” (that is, of its Consciousness) “as itself ” (and
thus as its Self-consciousness) (§417; emphasis added). (Compare the
unity of finite and infinite that was achieved in true infinity, because in
it, the content of the finite was viewed by the infinite not as abstractly
opposed to it, but as itself.) The content of Consciousness’s object is
Spirit “itself ” insofar as each Self-consciousness “does not differentiate

1998], p. 226) – a theory that Forster thinks Hegel’s conclusion that “self-consciousness
achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” (PhG §175/TWA 3:144; com-
pare EG §430) is meant to support (Hegel’s Idea, p. 250). I don’t have the space in this
book to interpret Hegel’s mutual recognition argument in the Phenomenology of Spirit, but
in view of its close similarity to the present argument in the EG, it seems very unlikely
that its purpose is as different from that of the present argument as it would have to be
in order to support either the theory of “truth” that Forster ascribes to Hegel, or the
conception of selfhood that Brandom ascribes to Hegel.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 291

itself from the other” (§436). Hegel’s argument for the need for recog-
nition, in EG §430, and thus ultimately for this non-“differentiation”
of oneself from the other, parallels his arguments, in the Logic’s chap-
ter on the Idea, for the living individual’s “identity with the other in-
dividual” (WL 6:485/GW 12:190,14/773; see 5.14), and for the ob-
jective Concept’s having “its own objectivity” in its other (WL 6: 549/
GW 12:236,9–11/824; see 5.17). Hegel consequently describes this non-
differentiation as a form of the same “reason” (Vernunft) that also first
appeared in the Idea, differing from the Idea only in that the Concept,
here, exists “for itself” as Consciousness and Consciousness’s external
object (EG §437R) – that is, it embodies the externality of Nature, and
thus of Consciousness, combined with the Idea’s subject/object unity.
We can also add, picking up Hegel’s reference to “all virtues, love,
friendship, bravery, honor, fame,” and so forth (EG §436R; emphasis
added), that this “reason” in which each Self-consciousness “does not
differentiate itself from the other” (§436) is not distinguishable from a
relationship of love, in a broad sense of that term such as we encounter
in Plato and in mysticism. As a further development, in the realms of
nature and Consciousness, of the Logic’s Idea and Concept, Spirit’s
“universal Self-consciousness” is a concretization of the “free love” in
which the Concept “bears itself toward what is different from it as toward
its own self” (WL 6:277/GW 12:35,3–5/603; see 5.2). In the remainder
of the Philosophy of Spirit, we will see how this “reason/love” articulates
itself as intelligence, ethics, world history, art, religion, and philosophy.
First, however, there is one more important question about Hegel’s
argument for “mutual recognition” whose answer can be found in
Self-consciousness’s “concreteness.” This is the question, Why must my
“recognition” of the freedom of others have practical consequences – why
should it constrain my actions in relation to them, as “love, friendship,”
and so forth, obviously would – rather than being merely a disinter-
ested, “theoretical” acknowledgement of a feature that they possess?
The answer to this question is that what is being accomplished at the
end of “Self-consciousness” is not just Consciousness of a fact about each
of the parties, but also the Self-consciousness that is “the drive to posit
what it is in itself . . . to liberate itself from its sensuality” (§425). This
“drive” and “positing” are clearly not passive theory; they are active and
practical (comparable in that way to the “ought” in “Quality”). When
this Self-consciousness is “divided” into “free object[s]” (§429), these
objects retain their identity with each other (they “do not differentiate
[themselves] from the other” [EG §436]), in the same way that the
292 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

living individuals and persons, in the Idea, retained their “identity with
the other individual,” and so on; and because of what Self-consciousness
is, the identity of the “free object[s]” with each other is just as active and
practical (self-“positing”) as it is passive and theoretical (Conscious), so
the relations between them must be just as practical as they are theo-
retical. And their “recognition” of each other’s freedom, in particular,
must be just as practical as it is theoretical.
Theory and practice were distinguished from one another in “Cog-
nition,” which was the intermediate, “relational” form of the Idea; they
are distinguished again within “Consciousness”; and they will be dis-
tinguished yet another time in “Spirit as Such”; but in each case the
distinction is overcome (WL 6:545/GW 12:233,20–2/821; EG §§438–
439; EG §§481–482), ultimately by the force of the “in and for itself”
character of the Concept, where the “for itself” encapsulates the self-
supersession that first appeared in negativity and true infinity, and that
accomplished reality by uniting something like theory (namely, nega-
tion, or finitude) with something like practice (namely, second nega-
tion, or the “ought”). On the fundamental level of negativity and true
infinity, theory and practice are inseparable aspects of one reality.7

.. Subjective Spirit: “Spirit as Such,” Theoretical,

Practical, and Free
Having arrived at “reason” and superseded the contrast between Con-
sciousness and Self-Consciousness, subjective Spirit has now also super-
seded the contrast between “Soul” and “Consciousness” that created its
first two divisions. In place of “natural Spirit” (Soul) and of “Spirit in
its relation or particularization” (Consciousness), we now have “Spirit

7 Paul Redding’s Hegel’s Hermeneutics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) is the only
book I’m aware of that suggests that Hegel’s account of “recognition,” in the Phenomenology
of Spirit and the Philosophy of Spirit, is an elaboration of ideas that first emerge (within the
Encyclopedia) in his Logic. (See Hegel’s Hermeneutics, pp. 156–165.) Robert R. Williams,
Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), gives a useful
discussion (pp. 300–312) of Hegel’s views on whole/part relationships, Mechanism, and
Chemism in the Science of Logic, but Williams introduces them only in connection with the
topic of “The State as a Social Organism” (in contrast to social contract theories of the
state). As for Hegel’s account of “recognition,” itself, in the Encyclopedia and elsewhere,
Williams doesn’t appear to view the Logic as necessary for making sense of it. As far as
I know, my account of Hegel’s arguments against egoism in the Logic’s “Idea” and in
“Self-consciousness” – and of the relation between the two arguments – is new, in the
literature.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 293

determining itself in itself” (§387), or “Spirit as such” (§387A,

10:40/26). Hegel entitles the analysis of (subjective) Spirit as such,
“Psychology” (Psychologie), using the Greek root psuche to designate sub-
jective Spirit in its fully developed form, whereas he had used the Ger-
manic Seele (“soul”) for subjective Spirit in its initial, least-developed
form (as “natural Spirit,” in the so-called “Anthropology”).
Like the Idea, which combined the unity of the subjective Concept
with the diversity of Objectivity, subjective Spirit as such – which I’ll
refer to in this section simply as “subjective Spirit” – combines the
“substance”-like unity of “natural Spirit” (the “soul”) with this unity’s
self-division, which was characteristic of “Consciousness” in the broad
sense (including Self-consciousness) (§440A, 10:230). The substance-
like unity has been regained as a result of Consciousness’s overcoming
of its internal divisions; but subjective Spirit will have its own internal
divisions, as well. Again, like the Idea, subjective Spirit will progress
through a stage of theoretical Spirit (corresponding to the “Idea of
the true”) and a stage of practical Spirit (corresponding to the “Idea
of the good”). Theoretical Spirit embodies Reason’s necessary project
of positing its immediate determinateness as “its own” (das Seinige) –
so that it will be free – while practical Spirit embodies Reason’s equally
necessary project of positing its determinateness not only as its own, but
as what is (das Seiende) (§443).
The phases of theoretical spirit – beginning with its immediate de-
terminateness and making it, by stages, its “own” – are “intuition” (An-
schauung), “representation” (Vorstellung), and “thought” (Denken). This
sequence expands upon the critique of the “given” that Hegel had pre-
sented earlier in his accounts of “shine” (see 4.7) and of Consciousness
(6.5) (as well as, famously, in Chapters 1–3 of the Phenomenology of Spirit).
Intuition is initially simply “feeling,” in the sense of sheer immediacy
(what one “finds” in oneself) (§446), but this state divides into (1)
“attention, without which nothing is for” the Spirit, and which Hegel
describes as “active inwardization [Erinnerung], the moment of ownness,”
and (2) Intelligence’s determination of the feeling’s content as “being
outside itself, projecting it into time and space, which are the forms in which
it is intuitive” (§448). Hegel explains that in echoing Kant’s doctrine,
in the Critique of Pure Reason, that time and space are the “forms” of
intuition, he does not endorse Kant’s view that they “are only subjective
forms,” because in “projecting” intuition’s content into time and space,
as Hegel says it does, Intelligence is availing itself of something that
has already been set up for it by the “creative eternal Idea” (§448A,
294 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

10:253/198), at the beginning of the Philosophy of Nature. Intelligence,

however, directs its attention at this externality itself, and thus “awakens
to” and “recollects” or inwardizes (erinnert) itself in this, its immediacy,
and as a result, intuition becomes “representation,” which no longer
needs the immediacy and the sheer “finding” that were characteristic
of intuition (§450).
However, Intelligence’s “own”

is still conditioned by immediacy, is not yet itself manifestly [an ihm] being.
Intelligence’s path, in the forms of representation, is to make immediacy
equally internal, to put itself into itself as an intuition [sich in sich selbst
anschauend zu setzen], to supersede itself as the subjectivity of interiority
and in itself to “externalize” itself [ihrer sich entäußern] and to be in itself in
its own externality.
(EG §451)

Intelligence does this, first, through recollection properly so-called, in

which an inner image is formed and is related to the prior intuition –
through a “universality” – as an image of it (§454); then through imagi-
nation [Einbildungskraft], in which images are “associated” with one an-
other by virtue, again, of some “universal representation” (§455); and
finally in “sign-making fantasy” [Zeichen machende Phantasie], in which In-
telligence becomes self-externalizing, producing intuitions (§457), and
“uses filled space and time, intuition, as its own, deletes their immediate
and proper content and gives them another content as their import
and soul” (§458). At this point, Intelligence is finally able to “intuit”
itself, in its signs, and thus has become “manifestly being” (as Hegel put
it in §451), combining ownness (das Seinige) and being (das Seiende) as
it had to do in order to be Reason (§443, cited earlier).
Bearing in mind Hegel’s standing principle of “determinate nega-
tion,” that later stages preserve (while also cancelling) earlier stages
within them, it is clear that this account of mental life does not – as has
been said of his Phenomenology of Spirit – “reject dualism [about mind and
body] in favor of physicalism and behaviorism.”8 Intuitions, images, rep-
resentations, and imagination are all preserved (while also cancelled)
within the reality of the “sign-making” being. It is certainly true that
Hegel doesn’t endorse dualism – the doctrine that inner states have no
necessary relationship to external signs and actions. But he grants it

8 Michael N. Forster, Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1998), p. 4; emphasis added.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 295

the partial truth that he grants to “ownness,” which is a necessary aspect

of the more adequate totality. How could a philosopher who demon-
strates the unreality of the finite be a physicalist or a behaviorist? The
point of the statement that Intelligence “deletes the immediate and
proper content [of space, time, and intuition] and gives them another
content [namely, signs] as their import and soul” (§458), is clearly that
neither “behavior” nor the “physical” can any longer be taken merely
“at face value,” as physicalist and behaviorist reductionism and elimi-
native materialism expect us to take them. Hegel wants us to know that
there are other alternatives to Cartesian dualism besides (physicalist,
behaviorist, or eliminative) materialism. Spirit, after all, is a “coming
back out of Nature” (EG §381), to itself, and the “positing of Nature as
its [Spirit’s] world” (§384).9 Hegel’s treatment of signs, language, and
(eventually) human action will all be in keeping with these principles.
From “signs,” Hegel proceeds, not surprisingly, to language (§459;
note the important references backward to “anthropology” and for-
ward to the “understanding” [§459R]). The shape taken by language
here is the “name,” which connects the “representation, as something
internal, with the intuition, as something external” (§460). This con-
nection, which itself is initially “external,” needs to be inwardized or
“recollected” (ibid.), made Intelligence’s “own” (§461); this is the

9 Michael Forster quotes numerous passages in which Hegel polemicizes against Cartesian
dualism, but none in which he reduces mental states to physical states or behavior, as
such, or eliminates mental states altogether. Just as the entire Logic and Encyclopedia must
be read in the light of the Logic’s first chapter on how the finite goes beyond itself, in
infinity, so also the Phenomenology of Spirit (including what it says about the priority of
“action” over inner intentions, in the passages that Forster cites) must be read in the
light of the “infinity” that forms the transition from Consciousness to Self-Consciousness
(PhG §160–163, 3:131–133), and that clearly goes beyond the usual physicalist and ma-
terialist conceptions of reality. Hegel makes his critical attitude toward both materialism
and dualism explicit at EG §389A, TWA 10:49/34. In his subtle Das Körper-Seele-Problem.
Kommentar zu Hegel, Enzyklopädie (1830), §389 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1992),
Michael Wolff maintains that “Hegel has no reason to raise any objection to speaking of
a perceiving, thinking or even knowing matter. . . . This is also the sense in which we are
to understand Hegel when he speaks of the ‘emergence of the Spirit from nature,’” and
so on (p. 73; emphasis added), but Wolff does not address the lines that I quoted in the
text from EG §381 and §384, or Hegel’s principle that “The finite is not the real, but
the infinite” (WL 5:164/GW 21:136, 9/149), all of which imply that Spirit goes beyond
nature in such a way that it would not make sense to say that nature (or matter) as such
“perceives,” “thinks,” or “knows.” Wolff does make it clear on the next page that matter
does these things only via “supersession” (Aufhebung) (p. 74). What he does not make
clear is that the result of this supersession – as exemplified in true infinity, which governs
Spirit and according to which the finite is real only insofar as it goes beyond itself – is
296 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

job of “memory” (Gedächtnis, which “deals in general only with signs”

[§458R]), which will proceed through stages paralleling those by which
immediate intuition was inwardized (§461). In the first stage – “name-
retaining memory” – the connection between the outer intuition and
the inner representation is made “universal, that is, lasting,” so that
the content and the sign “become one representation” (§461). In the
second stage – “reproducing memory” – names are both inwardized,
so that no intuition or image is needed and they can be “associated”
with one another through the inward meaning (Bedeutung) that they
are given (§462), and also “externalized” (Entäußert) as mere sounds.
This difference between the meaning and the name is superseded in
“mechanical memory,” in which the “most extreme inwardization of rep-
resentation is its most extreme externalization, in which it posits itself
as the being, the universal space of names as such, that is, of senseless
words,” in “rote memory” (auswendig behalten) (§463). Hegel’s point
here is dual. First, it is that the purely mechanical and external string-
ing together of meaningless words is what is left when intuitions and
images have been superseded, but the structures of language have not
yet been introduced.10
But Hegel also says, about this absence of “meaning,” that thought
in its “activity” (Tätigkeit) “no longer has a meaning (Bedeutung) . . .
[because] its objectivity is no longer something diverse (verschieden) from the sub-
jective, just as this interiority [that is, the subjective] is manifestly being
(an ihr selbst seiend)” (§464; emphasis added). In the final stage of theo-
retical Spirit, which is “thought,” the subjective and the objective are not
diverse. This is the fundamental thesis of Hegel’s idealism (he repeats
it in §465A as the paradoxical claim that “Thought is being”). Hegel’s

that Hegel has just as clear an affinity to the “idealism” of Plato and Kant as he has
to the “materialism” of Robinet and Diderot. To expand one’s sense of the range of
options available in present-day philosophy of mind, and consequently also available to
Hegel, I recommend Hilary Putnam, “Philosophy and Our Mental Life,” in N. Block,
ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1980), pp. 134–143 (also in Putnam’s Mind, Language, and Reality, Philosophical Papers,
vol. 2 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]), in which Putnam argues that
“we have what we always wanted – an autonomous mental life. And we need no mysteries,
no ghostly agents, no élan vital to have it” (p. 142), because “Diderot and Descartes were
both wrong in assuming that if we are matter, or our souls are material, then there is a
physical explanation for our behavior” (p. 137; emphasis added).
10 Willem deVries gives an admirable explanation of this aspect of “mechanical memory” in
his Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988),
pp. 157–163. He tends, however, to skip over the “idealism” that stands out, for instance,
in Hegel’s next paragraph (EG §464).
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 297

systematic defense of this thesis is in the Science of Logic’s Doctrine of

Being and Doctrine of the Concept; here, he presupposes its truth, so
that any interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of “Spirit” that aims to
present Hegel’s understanding of its subject matter has no alternative
but to deal with these prior arguments in the Logic. In a nutshell, his
argument there is that since full “reality” is achieved only by the finite’s
going beyond itself by seeking rational authority for its actions or be-
liefs, full reality involves something like thought, and thus full reality is
not “diverse” from subjectivity (see 3.14–3.16, 3.19, and 5.3–5.4).
Under the heading of “Thought,” Hegel explains briefly how
thought’s still “given” content (§466) is processed by the conceptual
Understanding, which seeks “the truth of [the content’s] being,” and
by Judgment which relates it to a “universal,” and how Syllogism then
“supersedes this difference of form” by “determining content from
itself,” rather than taking it as given (§467). The simplest way to un-
derstand how Intelligence, as “thought,” could determine its own con-
tent is (again) to remember how, in true infinity, the activity of ratio-
nal inquiry itself created “reality” (3.19), which therefore must derive
whatever content it has from that activity, rather than from anything
outside it.
The upshot is that “Intelligence, knowing itself as what determines
the content, which is just as much its own as it is determined as being
(seiend), is will” (§468; emphasis added). Hegel analyzes the will under
the heading of “Practical Spirit.” He introduces his treatment with the
statement that “True freedom, as ethical life (Sittlichkeit), is that the will
has as its goals not a subjective, that is, selfish content, but a universal
one” (§469R, emphasis added) – a claim that depends for its plausibility
upon his refutation of egoism in the Science of Logic’s Doctrine of the
Concept (see 5.17) and in “Self-consciousness” (see 6.5.1). The essential
steps in his account of the will, which are presented in EG §§476–
480, are repeated with greater detail and precision in §§5–21 of the
Introduction to the Philosophy of Right, which I analyzed in 5.7, and I will
not repeat the analysis here. “The actually free will,” Hegel concludes
here, “is the unity of the theoretical and the practical Spirit; free will
that is for itself as free will” (EG §481), in that it knows itself as a reality
whose object, content and end is itself, its own freedom (EG §480, 481,
482; PR §21), rather than the satisfaction of particular inclinations or
passions that are generated in it by something other than itself.
However, the Spirit that is this free will is as yet “only in itself the
Idea, only the Concept of absolute Spirit”: It is “a finite will, but it is the
298 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

activity of developing [the Idea] and positing its developed content as a

determinate being [or] actuality” (EG §482). This activity and this deter-
minate being will be “objective Spirit” (and, indeed, “absolute Spirit,”
as “religious and scientific actuality” [§482R, 10:302/240], as well).

.. Objective Spirit: Introduction

Objective Spirit is the absolute Idea, but still only in itself, and therefore
dealing with the finite, external material of particular needs, natural
things, and the relations between singular wills (EG §483). Its goal is
to deal with them in such a way that freedom can “realize” itself – and
thus be “with itself,” at home – in this external, objective world (§484).
It does this by instituting universality, or “Right” (das Recht), which is
“to be understood comprehensively as the determinate being of all
determinations of freedom” (EG §486; cp. PR §29).
The treatment of Objective Spirit in the Encyclopedia’s Philosophy of
Spirit, which we will follow here, is much expanded in Hegel’s sepa-
rate treatise on ethics and politics, the Philosophy of Right (1821). I will
occasionally give references to important parallel passages there. For
the purpose of following Hegel’s overall argument in this area, the
Philosophy of Spirit’s treatment has the great advantage of surveyability;
and allowing for its inevitable concision, it is remarkably precise and
illuminating on the issues that it treats.11
“Right” will first be formal and abstract, having its determinate being
as the person and her property (Eigentum); then it will be “reflected
into itself,” having its determinate being “within itself” as “the subjective
will – Morality”; and finally it will be “substantial,” the actuality that is
in keeping with its Concept, as “ethical life, in family, civil society, and
the State” (§487; cp. PR §33).

.. Objective Spirit: Abstract “Right,” Property and Wrong

Right first takes the form of possessions or (when those possessions
embody my personal volition) of property. “Person”-hood is the “self-
knowledge” of the absolutely free will (§488; compare 5.17 on “person”
in the Idea); property is the “determinate being” of this personhood
(§489). The thing (Sache) that constitutes the property is the “mean”

11 The one section of the Philosophy of Right that I analyze in some detail in this book – in
5.7 – is §§5–21 of the Introduction.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 299

through which the “extremes” that are different persons are connected
(§491). Hegel makes it clear in the Philosophy of Right that the things that
can embody my personal volition and thus be my property include my
body (PR §47, 48). I make a “concrete return” from the external thing
“into myself,” insofar as “other people exist, I have a relation to them,
and they recognize and are recognized, reciprocally [dem Anerkannt-
sein von ihnen, das gegenseitig ist]” (EG §490). Here, Hegel is relying, of
course, on his account of “recognition” (in “Self-consciousness” [see
6.5.1]), and through it on the Idea (5.14–5.17), which achieved a “con-
creteness” that “abstract freedom” and spurious infinity fail to achieve.
Since, as I explained in 6.5.1, the “recognition” argument does not re-
quire that anyone in fact be recognized as free by someone else, in order
to be free (but only that each of us recognize others as capable of free-
dom, so that they can be capable of recognizing our freedom), there
is no need to assume that Hegel intends, in §490, to say that my claim
to ownership of a certain thing depends upon the contingent fact that
other people exist who are in fact willing to endorse that claim. Instead,
he presumably intends to make a point paralleling the one that he made
in §§429–436: that I can’t make a plausible claim to ownership unless
I am willing to grant that others can make similar claims, and that no
one of us possesses the final authority over the validity of such claims.
Property can pass between two persons by “contract” (Vertrag), which
however also reflects the “arbitrariness” of particular wills, and thus
brings with it the possibility of “wrong” (Unrecht), that is to say, of ac-
tions that do not correspond to “the right that is in and for itself”
(§495), which is the determinate being that would reflect freedom as
such, rather than “arbitrariness.” (On this distinction, see 5.7.) This
“wrong” can be either unintentional (unbefangen), or “deception” (evil
which pretends to acknowledge right), or “violently evil,” which is to
say, criminal (§§497–499). Wrong can be punished, but until there is
some distinction between right and the subjective will, such punish-
ment will be mere “revenge” (§500). So the subjective will that “either
gives determinate being to right in itself, or departs from that right and
opposes itself to it,” is the topic of the next domain of “right”: “Morality”
(Moralität) (§502; emphasis added).

.. Objective Spirit: “Morality,” Conscience and Evil

Hegel explains that “Morality,” as the name of the domain that he will
now explore, should be understood in a broad sense in which it refers
300 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

not only to what is morally good, but to the general issue of an “inner”
determination of the will, which may be for good or for evil (§503R).
The will that expresses itself in either of these ways – either giving being
to right in itself, or opposing it – is expressed in “action” (Handlung).
“Action” goes beyond the mere “deed” (Tat) of the subject insofar as
action is something that the subject can properly be held responsible for
(EG §504), since she intended its essential determination (this is the
“right of intention”) and its content was her goal, as being in some
sense her “welfare” (Wohl) (this is the “right of welfare”) (§505).
However, what is supposedly intended and what is actually done
can come into contradiction; and the “welfare” in question is either
“abstract,” or merely particular because it “pertains only to this subject”
(§506). The concrete truth of these abstractions is “the content of the
universal will that is in and for itself,” and is “in and for itself good,” and is
thus “duty” for the subject (§507). “In and for itself,” as we know from
Chapters 4 and 5, is Hegel’s description of essence or the Concept as
summing up the starting point (the “in itself”) and the self-supersession
and conclusion (the “for itself”) of Being. So the being of the universal
will that is in and for itself embodies the lasting accomplishments of
Being.
However, insofar as the particularity that this universal includes
“is still abstract, no principle of determination is present” (§508, emphasis
added; see 5.5 on “principle of its differences”). Determination oc-
curs outside the universal, as well as inside it, and gives rise to “the
deepest contradiction” (ibid.). This contradiction takes four forms:
(a) There are various goods and duties, which conflict with one an-
other. The subject ought to resolve these conflicts. (b) The subject ought
to achieve the determinate being of her own freedom. She also ought to
pursue the universal good. (This is precisely the duality of “autonomy” –
which has the result that autonomy as such needn’t necessarily be
guided by the moral Categorical Imperative – with which I charged Kant
in 2.7.) Whether these two oughts harmonize or not is contingent, but
they ought to be harmonized. (c) As abstract self-certainty, abstract re-
flection of freedom into itself, the subject is different from reason and is
able to treat the universal as itself something particular and contingent,
and thus to be evil (§509). (Compare PR§140[f] on “irony” and evil.)
(d) As a result of the difference, in “morality,” between the subjective
will and external “matter” (Sache), it is contingent whether the good is
realized in the world and whether the subject finds her welfare there;
but both of these ought to occur.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 301

In all of these ways, Hegel says, Morality is contradictory. What is

meant by “contradictory,” here? We know from the “Quality” chapter
of the WL that Hegel regards the “ought” as a necessary step toward
full “reality,” but one that initially leads to the spurious infinity in which
the finite and the ought are opposed to and rendered finite by each
other, so that reality is not accomplished, because the transcendence of
finitude that it requires is not accomplished (see 3.9.). So the “ought”
fails, initially, to achieve what it is meant to achieve. (It succeeds in achiev-
ing the reality that it’s meant to achieve, when it is superseded by and
included within true infinity.) It’s evident from the summary that I just
gave of Hegel’s account of the contradictoriness of “morality” that that
contradictoriness is closely associated, for him, with the “ought.” Is the
“ought” of Morality also intended to achieve a kind of reality? Sure
enough, the goal of the free will, in Objective Spirit, was to “realize”
its concept in the external, objective world of particular needs, natu-
ral things, and the relations between singular wills (EG §§483–484; see
6.7). The “ought” came into Morality, along with the “good” and “duty,”
as a way of overcoming the gap between what is supposedly intended and
what is actually done, in the world, and between welfare’s “abstractness”
and its mere particularity (§506). In each of these areas, the “good” and
the “ought” were clearly meant to make the free will not merely inner,
merely abstract, or merely particular, but effectively “real.” But as Hegel
explains in §§508–510, they fail to do so, because they create new polar
oppositions, which only “ought” to be harmonized, but aren’t yet har-
monized in reality. As in “Quality,” something that was meant to achieve
reality, by surpassing finitude, initially only creates new finitudes. Just
as in Hegel’s original account of “contradiction,” in the Doctrine of
Essence (see 4.12), here too “contradiction” results from the unsta-
ble coexistence of concepts stemming from negativity (in this case, the
concept of the free will and its reality), and concepts stemming from
negation and diversity (in this case, the concepts of particular needs,
natural things, and the relations between singular wills). This instability
will be, as always, the motor of the dialectical development.12
Hegel dramatically describes the situation that has been arrived at as
the confrontation of Conscience and Evil, in which the former is “the

12 In his more detailed treatment of Morality in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel diagnoses
various moral philosophies as exhibiting the “contradictoriness” that he has described,
here, in general terms. These philosophies include Kant’s ethics (PR §135R; see 5.6),
Jesuit “probabilism,” and Friedrich von Schlegel’s “irony” (PR §140). For my assessment
of Hegel’s accusation that Kant’s ethical principle is effectively “empty,” see 5.6.
302 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

will of the good, but which in this pure subjectivity is the non-Objective,
non-universal, and unsayable,” and the latter, rather than remaining
in the abstractness of “decision,” “gives itself the content, against the
good, of a subjective interest” (§511). But the “result, the truth” of this
confrontation is that both the evil will, which is “for itself against the
good,” and the good which is only abstract and an “ought,” are “null”
(nichtig) – and that the Concept (in contrast to the point of view of
mere “relation” [see 4.13, final paragraph] which Morality represents)
shows how to conceive of subjectivity in its “identity with” the good, as
its translation into deed (its Betätigung) and its development (§512; cf.
PR §141). The evil will and the abstract good are both “null,” I sug-
gest, because they both fail to achieve the “reality” (of the free will in
the external) that Objective Spirit aims to achieve. The evil will fails to
achieve this reality because it fails to be fully free (because it commits
itself to a particular subjective “interest” [compare PR §15]). (It is rea-
sonable to add – though Hegel doesn’t say this here – that the evil will
also fails to recognize the freedom of other wills as “not differentiated”
from its own, as the mutual recognition argument shows that a free will
must.) And the abstract good fails to achieve this reality because it fails
to achieve concrete form in the external world. In “Ethical Life” (Sit-
tlichkeit), Hegel will show how the free will can achieve concrete form
in the external world without ceasing to be free – how subjectivity can
have “identity with” the good.

.. Objective Spirit: “Ethical Life” (Sittlichkeit)

6.10.1 Introduction to Ethical Life. Hegel writes that “ethical life” is the
completion of Objective Spirit, and thus the “truth” of both Subjective
and Objective Spirit. Objective Spirit’s freedom was divided between the
“thing” (Sache) (in Abstract Right) and the abstractly universal good (in
Morality); the former, in its inner singularity, was abstractly opposed to
the universal. Both of these one-sidednesses are overcome when “self-
conscious freedom becomes Nature” (EG §513) (in PR §151A, Hegel calls
it “a second, spiritual nature”), by becoming both something that indi-
viduals are conscious of, and custom (Sitte) (EG §513), or the “Spirit of a
people” (§514). Viewing their customary duty as both “theirs and some-
thing existing (Seiendes)” (ibid.), persons who participate in ethical life
aren’t divided in the ways that I mentioned. Customs are “something
existing (Seiendes)” in that they are habitual and shared throughout
the people, but they are liberating in the same way that habit is
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 303

liberating: The self “exists in these forms as its possession” (EG §410,
10:184/140; see 6.4 on “habit”).
Hegel will make it clear later, under the heading of “World History,”
that the “customs” of “ethical life” are revised over time, as people be-
come clearer about what freedom requires. Accordingly, the “customs”
that Hegel lays out in the detailed account of “ethical life” that he now
proceeds to give are meant to represent not his own society or any other
existing society, but rather the customs that will fully articulate freedom.
So the sequence in which he develops these customs does not represent
any sort of historical sequence, but rather a logical one, moving (as, for
example, the Idea moved) from a more “immediate or natural” stage
through a “relative” stage to a final, self-conscious stage. “Immediate or
natural” ethical life is the family; the “relative totality” of relations be-
tween independent individuals is civil society; and “self-conscious” ethical
life as an “organic actuality” is the state constitution (§517).

6.10.2 The Family. The family “contains the natural moment [of] the re-
lation between the sexes, but elevated into a spiritual determination; –
the unitedness that goes with love and with an attitude of trust” (§518).
The difference between the natural sexes, Hegel says, “appears also
equally as a difference of intellectual and ethical vocation,” a differ-
ence that he explains in some detail in PR §§165–166. The resulting
“marriage” must be monogamous (see PR §167). The family is “one
person” (§520). It educates its children to the point where they can be
“self-standing persons” (§521) and establish their own families (§522).
This multiplication of families, as well as the fact that the family as such
depends upon “feeling” and thus is subject to contingency and tran-
siency, so that its members (when it disintegrates) can encounter one
another as self-standing persons in legally defined relationships, gener-
ates a new sphere of ethical life, “civil society” (die bürgerliche Gesellschaft)
(§520).

6.10.3 Civil Society. Civil society is initially non-“ethical,” insofar as in

it, individuals simply pursue their individual interests. This is the situ-
ation of “atomism” (§523). Given that most resources are owned (not
available for simple appropriation), this produces a need for individual
work, to meet one’s needs (§524). Those needs become differentiated,
and a “division of labor” results, together with individual education and
culture (Bildung) (§525), both as consumer and as producer. These
make work more uniform and easier, and they also make the individual
304 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

correspondingly dependent upon society as a whole for the satisfaction

of needs that can’t be satisfied by her own specialized type of labor
(§526). The concrete division of the society’s resources according to
the moments of the Concept (§527) yields a division of the population
into three “estates” (Stände): the “substantial or natural estate” (Hegel
has in mind agricultural landowners); the “second, reflected estate”
(what we might call the middle classes or the bourgeoisie); and the
“third, thinking estate,” which is responsible for the society’s universal
interests (§528).
If it is to be a secure system of freedom, the “system of needs” that
we have just described needs to be governed by law (§529). The first re-
quirement of law is that it should be “known and posited as what is valid”
(ibid.). Hegel mentions Sir Robert Peel’s efforts toward legal codifica-
tion in England, but he probably has in mind, even more, the famous
Code Napoléon, with its effect of liberating ordinary citizens from legal
obscurities that were known and accessible only to experts. Law must be
“made known” (§530). It is made “necessary” (and thus “objective”) by
the administration of justice (§531). Courts make right non-contingent,
in particular turning revenge into punishment (§531).
So far, civil society is nevertheless dependent on the “particular sub-
jectivity of the judge,” and on the “blind necessity of the system of
needs”: There is no guarantee that what is produced by either of these
will coincide with “right in itself” or with “the consciousness of the
universal” (§532). Two steps in the direction of such a guarantee are
the “police” (by which Hegel means public authorities who attend to
issues of public welfare) and the “corporation” (by which he means
welfare-promoting membership organizations such as municipalities
and churches [see PR §§288 and 270R]). In the “corporation,” Hegel
emphasizes, “the particular citizen finds security for his property as a
private person, but also steps out of his singular private interest and has
a conscious activity aimed at a relatively universal end” (§534; emphasis
added). This is one of the places where Hegel addresses the challenge
that was later aimed at him by Karl Marx, who maintained in his early
manuscript, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, that Hegel had not
shown, and could not show, any connection between the conscious-
ness of the bourgeois, as a private person, and the consciousness of a
citizen, concerned with the public interest.13 The same general issue

13 “In virtue of its character, civil society, or the private estate, does not have the universal as
the end of its essential activity. . . . In order to achieve political significance and efficacy
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 305

was stressed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Emile and elsewhere, and

by Benjamin Constant, with his contrast between the public-spirited
“liberty of the ancients” and the self-interested “liberty of the mod-
erns.”14 Hegel’s solution to this problem – which is a major problem
for any theory, like his, that takes seriously the role of apparently purely
self-interested behavior in the economic realm – is to reinterpret the
pursuit of economic self-interest as such as being, from the beginning,
only partially free, so that it is not surprising when the “private person,”
by participating in welfare-promoting mutual aid institutions such as
municipalities and churches, discovers a greater freedom there and
“steps out of his singular private interest and has a conscious activity
aimed at a relatively universal end.” The private citizen in the first place
cannot be purely egoistic, since he has already absorbed the conclusions
of Hegel’s arguments against rational egoism in the WL’s Doctrine of
the Concept and in EG’s account of mutual recognition. The broader
perspective that the private person takes on through participation in
the “corporation,” was also anticipated in part by the education and cul-
ture (Bildung) (EG §525) that he received by participating in market
society. This education and culture already created a distance between
the individual’s immediate urges, on the one hand, and his educated or
cultivated “needs,” on the other; the perspective of the “corporation”
adds to that distance. This is how Hegel connects the apparent “atom-
ism” of market society as described by writers such as Adam Smith to
the public spirit that must exist, in some way, if there is to be a “thinking
estate” and a “state” that concern themselves with the freedom of the
community as a whole.15

it must rather renounce itself as what it already is, as private estate. . . . This political
act is a complete transubstantiation. . . . The individual must thus undertake a complete
schism within himself. . . . The existence of the state as executive is complete without
him, and his existence in civil society is complete without the state” (Karl Marx, Critique
of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right,’ ed. Joseph O’Malley [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970], pp. 76–78; translation revised). Marx develops essentially this one point
for about ten pages (pp. 70–80). I have found no discussion of Marx’s point in the
published commentaries on his Critique.
14 See Rousseau, Emile, translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 40,
and Benjamin Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1814), Part II, secs. 6–9,
and “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns” (1819), both in
his Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988).
15 I give a detailed interpretation of Hegel’s argument from “civil society” to the “state” in
“How Hegel Reconciles Private Freedom with Citizenship,” Journal of Political Philosophy
7 (1999): 419–433.
306 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

6.10.4 The State. As “the self-conscious ethical substance,” the state unites
the principle of civil society with that of the family (EG §535). The
principle of the family is the unity that in the family takes the form of
the feeling of love; but in the state, in order to be consistent with civil
society’s “knowing and self-active will,” this unity receives the form of
“known universality” which has “knowing subjectivity” as its goal (ibid.).
This “knowing subjectivity” I take to be the same “freedom” that ethical
life was initially described as turning into a (second) nature (EG §513;
cf. PR §142). The role of the state is to promote this freedom consciously
and intentionally in the civil society and the families that make it up, but
which in themselves don’t combine unity and a knowing and self-active
will, and thus can’t themselves promote it systematically.
Hegel analyzes the state first from the point of view of its
inner public law or constitution, then from the point of view of
its external relations (relations with other states), and finally as a
“moment” in the development of Spirit’s universal Idea in its actual-
ity, which is world history (§536). The state’s job is to protect its cit-
izens and promote their welfare, by protecting the family and guid-
ing civil society, but also to “bring all of this back to the life of the
universal substance,” which sets limits to these subordinate spheres,
within it (§537). The laws by which it does this represent limitations
(Schranken) for the individual, but they are also the goal and “work”
of the whole, produced by the functioning of the estates and indi-
viduals, and freely willed by them (§538). The constitution is this ar-
ticulation of state power, determining how the rational will will be
found and how it will be put into practice (§539). Constitutions are
made by “indwelling spirit and history” – by the “spirit of a people”
(§540) – rather than by the decision or action of individuals, as such.
The “government” (Regierung) is the “universal” part of the constitu-
tion (the family and civil society being the others) (§541). Within the
government, various “powers” are distinguished. Hegel grants the ap-
propriateness of Montesquieu’s notion of the “division of powers,” but
insists that these powers must not be opposed to one another as though
they could exist independently of each other. Instead, they must be com-
bined in the manner of the Concept (§541R). Hegel asserts that when
this is done, it is seen that the first power is the “princely” one, so that
“the monarchical constitution is . . . the constitution of developed reason”
(§542). This is because the “abstract, final decision” needs to be embod-
ied in a single person, because (1) this gives the decision “the external
bond and sanction under which everything is done in the government”
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 307

(we might say, it expresses the government’s “sovereignty”), and (2) the
single person contributes “the determination of immediacy and thus of
nature,” which is best expressed in a hereditary succession (§542R).16
The second “power” is that of particular governmental departments:
lawgiving, administration of justice, “police,” and so on, for which par-
ticularly trained and skilled people are required (§543). The third is
the estates general (ständische Behörde), through which individual citi-
zens can feel that their voices play a role in legislation, in matters not
affecting (as war and peace do) the state’s functioning as an individual,
which pertains to the princely power (§544). Hegel emphasizes that the
people can contribute to the process of legislation only through their
organized “estates,” and not directly, because the latter would have the
effect of opposing one power to another, and thus destroying the logical
coherence of the state as such (§544R).

6.10.5 International Law, and World History. Since each state pertains to
a singular, naturally determined people, it excludes other states, and
although between such states there ought to be right or law, in actuality
there is none, so that conflicts between them lead to war (§545). War
underlines the relative nothingness of individuals and their property,
which may be sacrificed in order to preserve the universal substance
(§546). “So-called international law,” Hegel says, has to be recognized
by the states in question (§547).
Though states are not inherently subordinate to international law,
they are subordinate to “universal world-history . . . whose events exhibit
the dialectic of the various national Spirits – the judgment of the world
[or ‘the last judgment’: das Weltgericht]” (§548). This dialectic of na-
tional Spirits, which Hegel also refers to as “the plan of Providence”
(Plan der Vorsehung) (EG §549R, TWA 10:348/277), is simply the history
of freedom. “Philosophy” has shown that freedom is what history is
about (§549R, 10:352/281), insofar as philosophy has shown that free-
dom is the source of reality (see 3.8), so that the story of what is real
must be the story of freedom. Hegel’s accounts of Nature and Spirit,
including his analysis of ethical life as the state and world history, have
demonstrated this conclusion in more detail: that what gives each phase
its reality is the freedom that it promotes, achieves, or embodies.

16 The most plausible defense that I have seen of a view of monarchy that resembles Hegel’s
is given by Stephen C. Bosworth, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: The Test Case of Constitutional
Monarchy (New York: Garland, 1991).
308 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

.. Absolute Spirit: Introduction

The thinking Spirit of world history, by stripping off . . . those limitations
of the Spirits of particular peoples and its own involvement in the world
[its Weltlichkeit], lays hold of its concrete universality, and elevates itself to
knowledge of Absolute Spirit [zum Wissen des absoluten Geistes] as the eternally
actual truth, in which knowing reason is free for itself, while necessity,
nature, and history are only ministrant to its revelation and the vessels of
its honor.
(EG §552)

It’s important to notice the grammatical ambiguity of the German for-

mula, “zum Wissen des absoluten Geistes,” as well as of related formula-
tions such as “elevation of the Spirit to God” (§552R, 10:354/282; cf.
EL §50R, 8:131–132/95–96, and VPRel 1:308/1:414). “Zum Wissen des
absoluten Geistes” could just as well be translated, “to knowledge that is
(or belongs to) Absolute Spirit”; and it is just as reasonable to interpret
“elevation of the Spirit to God” as the elevation by which the Spirit
becomes God, as it is to interpret it as the elevation by which the Spirit
reaches God. In keeping with his critique of spurious infinity, Hegel is
quite intentionally not speaking of God as something that is indepen-
dently “there,” waiting for finite humans to know him or to elevate their
“Spirit” to him. At the same time, in keeping with his critique of finitude,
Hegel is very clear that the finite humans aren’t “there,” or real, either,
independently of their elevation to the infinite. This is the moral of his
entire treatment of “Spirit”: that when you see what gives the phenom-
ena of Spirit (such as Consciousness, Morality, Civil Society, the Spirit
of a People, and so on) their full reality, you will see that it is infinite
freedom, as Absolute Spirit, that does this. As the (less real) finite hu-
mans going beyond themselves, this infinite freedom is what was true
in the traditional conception of a transcendent God. (In 3.17, I gave a
more detailed explanation of how true infinity serves to combine what
is true in traditional theism with what is true in naturalistic critiques of
traditional theism.)
There is also a second ambiguity in the “Wissen des absoluten Geistes ”:
an ambiguity between Spirit’s (God’s or humans’) “knowledge” as
knowledge of something other than itself, and its knowledge of itself. The
first interpretation – knowledge of something other than itself – is a nat-
ural one. Spirit does know the world as something other than itself, in-
sofar as Spirit is Consciousness, Intuition, Representation, and the like.
But in knowing the world as other than itself, Spirit comes to realize that
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 309

what is most real in this world is what is infinite, and thus is itself; and
at that point, the “knowledge of Absolute Spirit” emerges, as Absolute
Spirit’s self-knowledge. So the knowledge that is or belongs to Absolute
Spirit turns out to be self-knowledge – in keeping with Hegel’s initial
statement about Spirit, that Spirit is “the Idea that has arrived at its
being-for-self” (EG §381; see EN§376, and 6.3). Absolute Spirit is the
Spirit that fully satisfies this description.
Subjective and Objective Spirit should be seen, Hegel says, as unfold-
ing the “reality” or the “existence” of Absolute Spirit (EG §553), so that
it can know itself (compare §554, first sentence), which, as I have just
suggested, it must do in order to be itself.
Religion, as this supreme sphere may be in general designated, must be
regarded as issuing from the subject and having its home in the subject,
just as much as it is regarded as objectively issuing from Absolute Spirit,
which is as Spirit in its community [or “in its congregation”: der als Geist
in seiner Gemeinde ist].
(EG §554/292)

The difference, Hegel implies, between “issuing from the subject” and
“issuing from Absolute Spirit” is just a verbal one. Absolute Spirit’s ex-
istence is in its community. As Hegel had concluded much earlier (in
“Quality,” in the WL), the true infinite “is only as a transcending of” the
finite (WL 5:160/GW 21:133,36–37/145–146); and the “community”
is presumably finite. (Of course, we must also remember the comple-
mentary principle that human communities, for their part, reach their
full reality only by going beyond themselves as, or in, world history and
Absolute Spirit, since “finitude is only as a transcending of itself” [WL
5:160/GW 21:133,34/145].)
Why does Hegel say that the “supreme sphere” that is Absolute
Spirit may be designated as “religion,” even though we know that the
final form that Absolute Spirit will take is not religion, as such, but
philosophy? Evidently Hegel is using “religion” in a double sense.17 In
the narrower, more conventional sense, “religion” designates the sort
of material that he will analyze, especially, as the second phase of Ab-
solute Spirit (“Revealed Religion”). In the broader sense, it refers to

17 Walter Jaeschke provides detailed and very helpful analyses of this passage and of Abso-
lute Spirit as a whole (with the exception of “Art”), together with Hegel’s relevant lectures
and earlier publications, in Hermann Drüe, et al., Hegels ‘Enzyklopädie der philosophischen
Wissenschaften’ (1830). Ein Kommentar zum Systemgrundriß (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2000), pp. 375–501.
310 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

the sort of structure that he has just outlined, in which a community or

congregation is identical with the Spirit that “is . . . in its community” –
the structure that I identified, initially, in true infinity. In his Jena works
and in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, when he emphasizes phi-
losophy’s systematic preoccupation with God (as we are seeing, his sys-
tem in fact culminates in God as Absolute Spirit), Hegel often refers
to philosophy as “worship of God” or “service of God” (Gottesdienst)
(TWA 2:113/Diff 172; VPRel 1:4/1:84). In that broad sense, it makes
sense to refer to philosophy, likewise, as “religion”; and it’s not difficult
to imagine how art, as well, could be included under that kind of a
heading. The point being that all three – art, religion in the narrower
sense, and philosophy – direct attention toward and constitute a self-
knowing reality that can be said to subsume the less self-knowing and
less self-determining (and thus, less “real”) realities of subjective and
objective Spirit.
As though to emphasize that the “religion” in the broad sense under
which he is subsuming philosophy is not to be regarded as something
that is based on groundless faith, Hegel reasserts here (EG §554R)
what he argued in EL §63R (see 3.20): that when it is properly un-
derstood, “faith” is not opposed to knowledge; rather, it is the specific
kind of knowledge that goes beyond the finite and the domain of the
“understanding.”
Hegel says more about the issue of the relation between “religion”
and forms of human functioning that aren’t in the usual sense “reli-
gious” in his Remark to EG §552, the final paragraph prior to his formal
account of Absolute Spirit. Here he takes up the issue of “the relation
between the state and religion. . . . It is evident from what has preceded,”
Hegel says, “that religion is the substance [Substantialität] of the ethical dis-
position itself and of the state” (EG §552R, 10:355/283; emphasis added).
Hegel’s argument for this claim shows that he is using “religion,” here,
in his special, “broad” sense, rather than in the conventional narrower
sense. His argument is that because “religion is the consciousness of
absolute truth” (ibid.), what is to count as ethical must participate in it.
From which he immediately concludes that this “religion must have the
true content; that is, the Idea of God that is known in it must be the true
one” (ibid.; emphasis added). And he proceeds to explain how even
within the Christian religion, the “idea of God that is known” is not
always the true one. In Catholicism, “God is presented in the Host as
an external thing, for religious adoration,” and prayer and justification,
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 311

likewise, are externalized; all of which “binds the Spirit under an ex-
ternalism by which Spirit’s Concept is perverted and misconceived at
its source, and law and justice, morality and conscience, responsibil-
ity and duty are corrupted at their root” (§552R, 10:357/285). Such
a religion cannot support a truly ethical disposition or state, and po-
litical programs that assume that it can – that “a Revolution without a
Reformation” can be accomplished – are “a modern folly,” or at most a
“temporary expedient, when one lacks the power to descend into the
depths of the religious Spirit and raise it to its truth” (§552R, 10:360–
361/287–288). Evidently, then, the “religion” that is “the substance
of the ethical disposition itself and of the state” must be the properly
reformed religion that Hegel takes himself to be expounding in his
philosophical system.
Hegel goes on, in this Remark, to criticize Plato for supposing that
an ideal political community could be based on philosophy alone, and
not on the “religion” that Hegel is advocating. Here he associates this
“religion” with the Aristotelian conception of God or of “the entelechy
of thought [as] the noēsis tēs noēseōs [thinking on thinking]” (EG §552R,
10:362/289), in which, according to Hegel, we see “subjectivity” going
beyond the “substantiality” of the Platonic Forms. This subjectivity, he
says, involves “feeling, intuition, [and] representation”; and Greek (that
is, Platonic) philosophy, being confronted with a religion that embod-
ied less conceptual truth than the Christian religion embodied, had
to simply oppose “feeling, intuition, representation,” and polytheism’s
poetic imagination (§552R, 10:363/289), and thus wasn’t able to see
the identity of substance and subject – the process of the finite’s go-
ing beyond itself – that connects feeling, imagination, and so on, with
conceptual thought, in Absolute Spirit. In other words, Plato wasn’t
able to conceive of the unity of art, religion in the narrow sense, and
philosophy, in something like Absolute Spirit, because he lacked the
conception of “negativity” or the finite’s going beyond itself, which
Hegel refers to in this passage as “subjectivity,” and which enables him
to interpret these three domains – together with all the domains that
precede them – as systematically interrelated and mutually supportive.
It is clear that the intimate relation that Hegel finds, here, between
the state and “religion,” does not coincide with the Romantic notion of
the “unity of state and church,” which Hegel discusses in the Philosophy of
Right (PR §270R, 7:428/301; emphasis altered), and which he rejects
because he regards it as the formula for “oriental despotism” (in which
312 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

“there is no state,” in the proper sense of the word).18 The “religion” –

and the “community” or “congregation” (Gemeinde) – that Hegel is dis-
cussing in EG §552R and §554 are not identifiable as the property
of any particular ecclesiastical organization (even though Hegel does
believe that Lutheran Christianity exhibits them better than any other
church does). Hegel agrees with Romanticism in criticizing the Enlight-
enment’s rejection of God and religion, but unlike Romanticism, he is
not satisfied to reject that rejection, and instead considers it vital to deal
with the Enlightenment’s justified critique of the traditional conceptual-
izations of God and religion, and of religious authority and its relation
to politics.
In his final introductory paragraph on Absolute Spirit, Hegel de-
scribes this Spirit’s “subjective Consciousness” as the “process” by which
“faith in the testimony of the Spirit” is the “certainty of objective truth”
(EG §555). It is a “process,” because although this faith and this cer-
tainty are immediately one, there is nevertheless a process of “super-
seding opposition,” “authenticating” that initial certainty, and thus
“attaining reconciliation, the actuality of Spirit,” and these are achieved
through “devotion, the implicit or explicit cult” (ibid.), which is the
practice of what Hegel is calling “religion,” in his broad sense of
the word. I gave an anticipatory sketch of this process in 3.19–3.20.
Hegel’s final account of it will make up the remainder of his discussion
of Absolute Spirit.

.. Absolute Spirit: Art

The “immediate” form of the religious “knowledge” that Hegel iden-
tified in EG §552 – 554, he locates in art. Art, on the one hand, is
composed of an art work and a subject who produces and reveres it;
but it is also “the concrete intuition and representation of Spirit that
is absolute in itself, as the Ideal” (EG §556). Here, the work’s “natural
immediacy . . . is so transfigured by the informing Spirit that the figure
exhibits nothing other than this” Spirit, Ideal, or Idea; this is “the figure
of beauty” (ibid.). In this case, “the God is determined both in a spiritual
way and simultaneously as a natural element or determinate being”; but

18 Friedrich Schlegel promoted the idea of a “Christian state . . . founded on the institution
of the Church,” in his Signatur des Zeitalters (1820–1823) (Friedrich Schlegel Kritische Ausgabe
7:561, cited by Allen Wood in the H. B. Nisbet translation of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], p. 460, n. 12). It was a common motif
of Restoration, anti-Revolutionary political thought.
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 313

this ‘both X and Y’ is not a “spiritual unity,” because in a spiritual unity the
natural would be superseded (aufgehoben) (§557), within the spiritual.
Accordingly, the community that worships in this way has only “custom”
(Sitte), without the “subjective inwardness of conscience” (ibid.). Conse-
quently, the Spirit of beautiful art – by which Hegel means, primarily,
ancient Greek art – is not yet Absolute Spirit as such, but rather “breaks
up into an indeterminate polytheism” (§559).
Hegel identifies three great categories or epochs of art: “symbolic”
(or “sublime”) art, “classical” or “beautiful” art, and “romantic” art.19
The first category covers all art (including poetry, music, and archi-
tecture) prior to classical Greece, including all the cultures of Asia; the
second refers primarily to the art of classical Greece; and the third refers
to the art that arises in connection with, or after the rise of, Christianity.
Despite his evident strong attachment to Greek art (to which the other
two categories relate as “before” and “after”), Hegel does not view the
Greeks as the last word, because he doesn’t view art itself as the last word:
“The ancient statue of the gods lacks the light of the eyes; the god does
not know himself,” he said in a lecture.20 “Beautiful art, like the religion
that is peculiar to it, has its future in true religion” (EG §563; emphasis
added), that is, in Christianity, in which Hegel thinks the Greek gods’
lack of self-knowledge, and of “the subjective inwardness of conscience,”
is remedied.

.. Absolute Spirit: Revealed Religion

A “revealed” God will remedy the lack of “subjective inwardness” and
self-knowledge in the sensual objects or sensual gods that were created
and honored by ancient Greek “beautiful art,” because a revealed God
is all about self-knowledge. “God is God only so far as he knows himself;
his self-knowledge is, further, his self-consciousness in man and man’s
knowledge of God, which proceeds to man’s self-knowledge in God”
(EG §564, 10:374/298). The first proposition, that God is God only so
far as he knows himself, follows from the account of God or Absolute
Spirit as self-knowledge that was given in EG §§552–554. The second

19 For a survey of Hegel’s work on the philosophy of art, drawing on unpublished lecture
transcripts, see Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert’s contribution to Hermann Drüe, et al.,
Hegels ‘Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften’ (1830). Ein Kommentar zum System-
grundriß (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 317–374.
20 Hegel, Vorlesungen. Ausgewählte Manuskripte und Nachschriften (Hamburg: Meiner,
1983 ff.), vol. 2, p. 180.
314 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

proposition, about man’s role in all of this, follows directly from the
conception of God as true infinity (on which, see 3.17). Putting them
together, we can conclude that God must be fully “revealed” or “man-
ifested” (EG §564), in and to man.21 Hegel reminds us that despite
the skepticism about knowledge of God that had become widespread
in religious circles in his time, Christianity is traditionally described as
“revealed religion.”
Whereas the Greek art-religion had operated on the level of the
senses, Christian religion operates, initially, on the level of representa-
tion (Vorstellung), which lays out its contents as self-standing “moments,”
appearances in temporal sequence, and events conceived of through
finite “reflection-determinations” (EG §565) – that is, as the Biblical sto-
ries of the Creation, Jesus, and so on. Hegel describes these self-standing
moments or elements as (a) an eternal and abiding content, (b) a dif-
ference between the eternal essence and its manifestation, and (c) an
infinite return and reconciliation of the one with the other (§566). The
first moment, “universality,” is the “creator of heaven and earth,” but
“in this eternal sphere, creates only himself as his son” (§567; emphasis
added). In the second moment, of “particularity” or “judgment,” the
eternal moment of mediation, which is the “son,” disintegrates into a
self-standing opposition of heaven and earth, nature and finite Spirit,
and this opposition sets itself up, in the extreme of self-contained (in
sich seienden) negativity, as Evil (§568). In the third moment, “singular-
ity,” however, in which the opposition of universality and particularity
goes back into its identical ground (that is, their “contradiction” is
“resolved”), three things happen. (1) The universal substance actual-
izes itself as a singular Self-consciousness, the eternal “son” enters time,
so that evil is superseded. By experiencing death, the son demonstrates
that he is “living and present in the world” (§569). (2) The singular
(human) subject sees this process, in (1), as something other than it-
self, but through the “testimony of the Spirit in it,” it first sees itself as
null and evil, and then throws off its natural and personal will, unites
itself with the son’s example in the pain of negativity, and thus knows
itself as united with the (original) essence (§570). (3) Through (1) and
(2), the original essence becomes both inherent in Self-consciousness,
and the actual presence of Spirit as the universal (ibid.).

21 In Chapter 4, we saw that “manifestation” – which Hegel identifies, in EG §564, with

“revelation” – was a distinguishing characteristic of the subjective Concept as it emerged
from the dualities of Essence (see 4.17).
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 315

Through these three “syllogisms,” and the cycle of concrete represen-

tational shapes that they exhibit, Spirit reveals itself. The temporal and
spatial dividedness and sequentiality that are embodied in these repre-
sentations are overcome both in the one-foldness of faith and devotion,
and also in thought, in which an unfolding can at the same time be
“known as an indivisible coherence”; and with this “thought,” of course,
we arrive at the third form of Absolute Spirit, philosophy (EG §571).
It should be clear from Hegel’s continual references, in his analysis
of revealed religion, to “representation,” that his use of words like “cre-
ation,” “the son,” and so forth is not meant to draw philosophical conclu-
sions. Rather, he is using the “representational” language of the religion
that he takes to represent most fully the philosophical truth – where that
philosophical truth, in order to be fully philosophical, must be expressed
in philosophical (“Conceptual”) rather than representational terminol-
ogy. Philosophy as such won’t speak of “the son.” Hegel does suggest,
however, a parallelism between the Conceptual truth (as presented by
his philosophy) and the Christian “representations,” which is so close
that despite their difference in “form,” in his opinion his philosophy
coheres best with, and could only have emerged from, Christianity.22
Granting the strong (at least) parallelism that Hegel exhibits, between
Christian doctrine and his own Conceptual metaphysics, the question
for an unorthodox semi-Christian eclectic like myself is, is it true that
Hegel’s Conceptual analysis coheres best with and thus could only
emerge from the Christian “revealed religion,” in particular? In §569,
Hegel describes the universal substance as being “actualized out of its
abstraction into singular Self-consciousness (zum einzelnen Selbstbewußt-
sein).” John Burbidge describes Hegel’s “singular” as a “something that
cannot be comprehended, but only indicated”; and Burbidge appears
to conclude that Hegel is justified in assuming (as Hegel no doubt does
assume) that the “singular Self-consciousness” that plays the role that
Hegel assigns to it, here, can only be that of a single human being, whom
a Christian would take to be Jesus.23
What I wonder, as a self-described “semi-Christian,” is why shouldn’t
this “singular” Self-consciousness be any of the numerous other inspired
and self-sacrificing teachers and martyrs that the world has seen? And

22 This interpretation of Hegel’s opinion is supported by, for example, his description of
Christianity, in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, as “the consummate religion” (die
vollendete Religion) (VPRel 3:1/LPR 3:61).
23 John W. Burbidge, Hegel on Logic and Religion. The Reasonableness of Christianity (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1992), p. 132 (quote) and p. 134 (implied conclusion).
316 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

then, thinking about Hegel’s doctrine that philosophy goes beyond

religious “representations,” I further wonder: Could Hegel be telling
us that the “singularity” or the singleness of Jesus, in the Christian reli-
gion, only “represents” the singularity of every subject in whom the divine
spirit of self-sacrifice is at work (through the “testimony of the Spirit in
it” [§570])? In that case, perhaps other religions could “represent”
that singularity in other, perhaps equally effective, ways. If Christian-
ity, as such, is only a “representation,” then it seems that Hegel’s claim
that Christianity coheres best with “philosophy,” and is the latter’s only
plausible historical source, could be revised, if the comparative study
of religions seemed to warrant revising it, without altering the logic of
Hegel’s overall account of Absolute Spirit.
To substantiate these suggestions would require a much more de-
tailed investigation than I have room for here. I’ll only add that it does
seem (prima facie) that other religious traditions besides the Christian
might reasonably be described as embodying “revealed religion,” in the
sense of a true infinity that is knowable by – manifest to – those who
participate in it. Greek polytheism probably would not satisfy this de-
scription, for reasons like those that Hegel alludes to in his account of
“Art,” but I don’t see why Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and
Islam, in their more sophisticated, less popular/mythological forms,
shouldn’t qualify. They all seem to say that the world is the manifesta-
tion of a deeper reality that is not adequately known simply as the world,
but is not radically opposed to the world either, but rather is to be known
through it and in relation to it, and in that sense (it seems reasonable
to say) is “manifest” or “revealed” in it.

.. Absolute Spirit: Philosophy

When philosophy knows what was “unfolded” in religion not as un-
folded but as “an indivisible coherence” (EG §571), it unites art’s intu-
ition and religion’s representation into “one-fold Spiritual intuition”
and also into “Self-conscious thought” (§572). Philosophy differs
from religion in its “form,” while having the same “content” (§573R,
10:380/303). It recognizes the necessity of the forms of which art and
religion avail themselves, while liberating content and form from the
“one-sidedness of the forms” and “elevating them into the absolute
form” (§573, 10:378/302).
This whole movement is complete when philosophy, looking back
on its knowledge, finally grasps its own Concept (§573, 10:379/302).
 nature, freedom, ethics, and god 317

This Concept, Hegel says, is “the self-thinking Idea, truth that knows
itself” (§574). It is “the Logical” (das Logische) which has been “tested [or
‘proven’: bewährt] in the concrete content [that is, in Nature and Spirit]
as its actuality” (ibid.). The Logic’s Absolute Idea was also described,
earlier, as “self-thinking” (EL §236); this self-thinking is now also self-
“knowing,” and thus it is knowledge or science (Wissenschaft). (On this
“knowledge” or “science,” compare WL 6:573/GW 12:253,7–15/843–
844, and 6.1). However, this knowledge or science “has returned to its
beginning, and the Logical, as the Spiritual, is science’s result, which has
shown itself to be the truth that is in and for itself and has elevated
itself out of its positing-in-advance judgment or division [Urteil] – out
of the concrete intuition and the representation of its content – into its
pure principle, which is its element” (EPW27, 415). The Logical Idea,
having been “tested” in the concrete contents of Nature and Spirit, has
thus shown itself to be the truth that epitomizes Being (by being “in
and for itself”), and as the Spiritual it has elevated itself from its initial
division between artistic intuition and religious representation into its
pure principle.
This pure principle Hegel now restates with the aid of a final quota-
tion – which I condense – from Aristotle’s Metaphysics:
Thought . . . thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of
thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with
and thinking its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the
same. . . . It is active when it possesses this object. [So this actuality] is the
divine element which thought seems to contain.24 [And] the actuality of
thought is life, [so we say that] life and duration continuous and eternal
belong to God.
(Metaphysics xii,7, 1072b18–30; compare 1074a34)

By this quotation, Hegel again suggests that the circular pattern of

“self-thinking” is the fundamental truth of philosophy, and that philos-
ophy’s ultimate circle has been completed by the Logical Idea’s emer-
gence in the culmination of Absolute Spirit as “truth that knows itself”
(EG §574). Self-knowing truth is not ultimately different from the self-
thinking Idea; so Spirit returns to “the Logical.” Hegel and Aristotle
also agree that this self-thinking Idea or self-knowing truth is what is

24 Here I follow the Revised Oxford Translation (The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan
Barnes [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984], 2:1695), rather than the H. Bonitz
translation, which is excerpted in TWA 10:395, note 8. The Oxford translation seems to
correspond better to what Hegel finds in the text.
318 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

properly referred to as “God.” Hegel could point out, though he does

not, that something very much like this self-thinking or self-knowing
circularity was already the pattern of the negation of the negation (or
“negativity”), which, as the core of “the Logical” and thus of the Idea,
also pervaded the Idea’s self-“testing” in Nature and Spirit. As Hegel
suggested by appealing (in implementing “negativity”) to the “Ought,”
a self must have something like a thought of itself or a knowledge of
itself in order to exist as such. His philosophical system has simply ex-
plored the ramifications of that thought, in relation to “otherness” of all
kinds. Absolute Spirit as Philosophy embodies the entire articulation,
in the Logic and the Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit, that has
gone before it.25

25 I have not considered the much-discussed “three syllogisms” of Logic, Nature, and Spirit
in EG §§575–577, which Hegel included in the first and third editions of the Encyclopedia
but not in the second edition, because I am persuaded by Walter Jaeschke’s analysis (in
Hermann Drüe, et al., Hegels ‘Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften’ (1830). Ein
Kommentar zum Systemgrundriß [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000], pp. 478–486)
that they don’t succeed in doing what Hegel hoped that they could do – to unify his
entire system into three “syllogisms” – because they fall back on early formulations of
Nature versus Spirit that don’t take into account the articulation of Spirit into Subjective,
Objective, and Absolute.
 7

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I will restate the implications of Hegel’s account of

freedom – or of true infinity or the Concept or Spirit – for each of
the main issues to which he applies it. For a full explanation of each
of these implications, the reader should turn back to the relevant parts
of the previous chapters, but a summary will be useful.

1. With regard to the duality of desire or inclination versus reason,

Hegel argues that finite desire or inclination must go beyond itself,
via the “Ought,” in order to achieve “reality” for itself. But this going
beyond itself, on the part of finite desire or inclination, constitutes
reason, properly understood (see 5.7). Rather than being the polar
opposite of desire or inclination, then, reason is the self-surpassing
of desire or inclination; and thus reason is “with itself” in its “other”
(that is, desire or inclination), so that each side, rather than being
limited and made finite by the other, is free.
2. Hegel treats the duality of human being versus divine being in the
same way. God – Absolute Spirit – is not the polar opposite of humans,
since that would render God finite, like us. Rather, God is the self-
surpassing of humans (and, to varying degrees, of everything else in
nature, as well). This does not reduce God to “us,” since it is only by
our surpassing ourselves that we become fully real – so we become
fully available, as something to which God could be “reduced,” only
by going beyond ourselves, and becoming God. Thus, we achieve
freedom, as the religious traditions assert, through God, but this
does not mean that our freedom is God’s rather than ours, for we
achieve selfhood itself – and thus the capacity to have “our own”
freedom – only by going beyond ourselves in God. So we are “with
ourselves,” and free, in God.
319
320 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

3. The duality of human subject or knower versus natural object or

known is likewise overcome through this freedom or true infinity,
since nature achieves full reality only by going beyond itself, in hu-
mans or God, so that our knowledge of nature’s full reality is our
knowledge of ourselves. To the extent that nature achieves reality by
going beyond itself, we are “with ourselves,” and free, in it.
4. The duality of “me” versus “you” is overcome through the depen-
dence of diverse individuals, me and you, on the one, “identical” true
infinity. Since our full reality is achieved only by our going beyond
ourselves, the difference between us as mere finite beings is not real.
Whatever difference is real will depend upon our relationship to true
infinity; it will be introduced by true infinity, through true infinity’s
“reflection” as diversity or its “particularization” as objective mecha-
nism or its “freely releasing” itself into the externality of space and
time. So our going beyond ourselves through our Genus-relationship
(in Life), through Cognition, and through our particularization of
Self-consciousness via “mutual recognition,” will take us back to that
“identity” with each other. Thus, our dependence on true infinity
for our ability to be “ourselves” and to “own” our lives requires us to
recognize our identity with each other: to be “with ourselves” in each
other, as well as in God. But this, of course, is still another dimension
of freedom: Rather than being rendered finite and unfree by other
humans, we can be “with ourselves” in them.
5. Finally, the duality of good versus evil is also overcome, insofar as
evil – as the twin of the “abstract good” (6.9 ; compare 3.24, 5.7) –
is seen as a necessary aspect or version of freedom, one, however,
that resists the conclusion of (at least) point 4 by insisting on its
abstract independence. When evil is seen in this way, it is seen not as
sheer perversion, “brute” evil, but as intelligible perversion; and thus
the concretely good will can be “with itself” – can see itself, though
horribly distorted – in evil, too. This perhaps highest reconciliation
that Hegel offers us may contribute more to our freedom than any
of the others.

To be “with oneself” in all of these ways is, in effect, to be “at home”

in oneself, one’s life, and the world. Hegel makes it clear that we aren’t
automatically “at home” in this way; the reality or “actuality” of freedom
requires that we do the necessary work – the thinking and abstracting by
which we “go beyond ourselves.” Doing that work, however, we find that
we aren’t inherently estranged from reality and each other. By “going
 conclusion 321

beyond ourselves,” we are “with ourselves,” in everything. Hegel has

shown that the ultimate reality is a freedom that is indistinguishable
from love (5.2, 5.17, 6.5.1).
It shouldn’t be difficult to see how this theory responds to the com-
mon criticisms of individualist “thinking for oneself” that I mentioned
in the first paragraphs of the Preface. To the empirical scientists who
tell us that what we call “thinking for ourselves” is really just another
causally determined process in nature, and to the post-modernists who
call one’s “self” an illusion, point 1 and point 3 reply that when we aren’t
satisfied that felt urges or opinions are the final authority on what we
should do or believe, it’s reasonable to say that we seek to go beyond
the nature that would simply “tell us” what to do or believe. And since
our discussion with the empirical scientists and the post-modernists is
precisely such a search (for a justified, rather than a merely causally
induced, belief), Hegel concludes that by engaging in this discussion,
the scientists and post-modernists in practice concede that it may be pos-
sible to go beyond nature, and to constitute a “self,” in this way. To
the religious thinkers who tell us that insistence on one’s own freedom
and independence may prevent one from experiencing the affiliation
with reality as a whole, and the resulting meaning, value, and identity,
that can be found through a relationship with God, point 2 replies by
showing how a relationship to something that it’s reasonable to call
“God” – and a relationship that embodies deep meaning, value, and
identity – can emerge precisely from insisting on thinking for oneself,
and thinking about what that kind of thinking brings about. To the
skeptics who tell us that we have no reason to think that thought of this
kind can give us access to reality, point 3 replies that if we understand
reality as something that is what it is by virtue of itself, we have reason
to think that this kind of thought precisely constitutes reality, and thus
must be able to know reality. To the defenders of “traditional values”
who tell us that there is nothing to deter a subject or a self that sets its
authority above that of tradition from disregarding the rights and in-
terests of others, point 4 replies that when a subject who seeks to think
for herself understands what that search brings about, she will see that
that search makes her, in an important sense, identical with others.
To the critics who complain that the mere existence of an individual,
as such, gives no access to any authoritative conception of value,
points 1–5 all respond by showing that the functioning of an indi-
vidual who deserves that name involves precisely the construction of
an authoritative conception of value (which will be “reconciled” with
322 hegel’s philosophy of reality, freedom, and god

reality as a whole in all of the ways suggested by points 1–5). And to

those who complain that modernity makes us “homeless,” points 1–5
show how people who think for themselves can be, and are, at home
in themselves, their world, and each other. In all of these ways, Hegel
successfully defends individualism’s basic notion, that it is vital to think
for oneself, against its apparently disastrous consequences.
 INDEX

absolute difference abstraction/abstractness

diversity and, 180 concreteness vs., 228–230
identity and, 176 essence and, 157
Absolute Idea, Hegelian concept of, 259. objectivity and, 239
See also Idea Self-consciousness and, 285
doubling of individual and, 287 and genesis of objectivity, 237
“method” and, 265–267 abstract universality, Hegelian discussion
as version of negativity, 264 of, 228
refutation of egoism in, 260–265 of Spirit, 276
Schelling misinterprets, 270 accidents, substance and, 200
absolute indifference action
essence and, 154–155 agent and, 23–27
substrate underlying quantity and desire and, 14–15
quality, 152–154 naturalist philosophy of, 23–27
absolute necessity, 196 objective Spirit and, 300
from actuality to, 192–196 active substance, Hegelian concept of, 201
and contingency, 195 permuted in the Concept, 214–216
as theodicy, 197 activity (Tätigkeit)
absolute relation, Hegelian concept of, abstract Self-consciousness and, 286
199–202 Hegelian concept of, 259
Absolute Spirit meaning of, 296
art in, 312–313 actuality
as divinity, 240 to absolute necessity, 192–196
human vs. divine being and, and Aristotle, 245
319 of freedom, 320
knowledge of/knowledge that is, Idea, reason and, 243–246
308–312 measure and, 147
nature and, 277 rational-actual concept, 85, 197–199,
a developed understanding of reality, 245
101 from reflection to, 190–192
philosophy in, 310, 315, 316–318 true infinity and, 83–86
revealed religion in, 313–316 Adams, David, xxiv
self-supersession of all that precedes advance (Fortgang), Hegelian concept of,
it, 188 266
subjective Consciousness of, “affirmative determination,” infinite as
312 finite’s, 78

323
324 index

agent reproduction discussed by, 249, 255

action and, 22–27 Revised Oxford Translation of, 317
desire and what is good for, 41 soul concept of, 249
and ethics enter into ontology, 72 teleology of, 242
in Doctrines of Essence and Concept, theology of, 107, 108, 311
141–143 art, Absolute Spirit and, 312–313
Hegel and Kant on, 23–27 Asian philosophy, 92
psychological traits and, 24 assimilation, Hegel’s discussion of,
“ages of man,” Hegel’s discussion of, 280 273–276
“alienness” atomism. See also social atomism
in Kantian conception of will, 18–20, being-for-one and transition to, 129
233, 236 civil society and, 303
“unhappy consciousness” and, 44, 45 collapse of true infinity and, 130, 134,
Allison, Henry, 41 141
alteration, quality as, 60 diversity and, 179
Ameriks, Karl, 46 egoism and, 262
Anderson, Elizabeth, 13, 16, 38 Greek atomism and Hegelian, 134
Angehrn, Emil, xxvii idea of life and, 257
animal life, Hegel’s discussion of, 250, 272, negation and, 132–136
273–276 quantity and measure and, 131
animistic magic, 92 rational egoism and, 141
Anselm, Saint, 101, 239 where and how Hegel responds to,
“Anthropology,” Hegel’s concept of, 279 126–127
language and, 295 attraction. See also repulsion
subjective Spirit and, 293 atomism and, 139
Aquinas, St. Thomas, xxvii, 9, 207 quantity and, 145
arbitrariness attribute, non-self-suffiency of, 62
aims to be free, but fails, 133 Aufheben, Hegelian concept of, xxv. See also
personal will and, 288 supersession (Aufhebung)
of will, 234, 299 Augustine, Saint, 197
Aristotle, 9, 39 Aune, Bruce, 41
anti-atomism in, 258 authority
Butler and Reid follow, 42 desire and, 15–16
concept of God, 311 reality as search for rational, 112
divine thought that thinks itself, 265 authority of reasons, and strength of
end as activity for, 84 desires, 16
essence concept of, 198 autonomy. See also rational autonomy;
ethics of, 220 self-government
“form” concept of, 216, 244, 245 and self-determining reality, 81
on friendship, 39 duality of, 300
Hegel and, 53, 72, 112, 245 Hegel’s critique of Kant’s claims for, 20,
Heidegger on, 103 300
human function discussed by, 235 Kant’s concept of, xxv
idea concept of, 94 Kantian ethics and, 39–42, 49, 300
individuality and happiness, theory of, relation of, to ethics reformulated by
255 Hegel 42–44
Irwin’s discussion of, 39 Ayer, A. J., 24, 25, 82, 161, 209
Kant differs from, 41
metaphysics of, 43, 317 “bad infinity” (schlechte Unendlichkeit). See
on arguing with skeptics, 110 spurious infinity
his relation to Plato, xxv Bauer, Bruno, xxx
“presence in it” concept and, 67 Baur, Ferdinand Christian, 46
 index 325

Bayle, Pierre, 45 Bitsch, Brigitte, xxviii

becoming (Werden), 57 “blind” necessity, 196
beginning, Hegelian “method” as, 266 Böhme, Jacob, 46, 104, 106, 256
behaviorism/physicalism, Hegel’s Bosworth, Stephen C., 307
alternative to, 294, 295 Bradley, Francis Herbert, 108
being, 54–59. See also determinate being Brandom, Robert, 289
(Dasein); Doctrine of Being; living Brinkmann, Klaus, 53, 67, 270
being Burbidge, John, xxvii, 315
duality of human vs. divine, 319 bureaucracy, Hegel’s discussion of, 307
negativity and, 188 Burke, Edmund, xxv
objective Spirit and, 300 Butler, Clark, 131
ownness and, 294 on Hegelian contradiction, 188
shine and, 159–169 Butler, Joseph, 16
Being and Time, 258 Kant and, 41, 42
Being, Nothing, and Becoming triad,
55–59 Campbell, C. A., 22
being-for-one, atomism and, 128, 132 Carnap, Rudolf, 161
being-for-other Categorical Imperative
Hegelian concept of, 66–69 Allison’s discussion of, 41
self-transcending being and, 72 autonomy and, 17, 40, 50
social atomism and, 138 “content” in, 20, 231
being-for-self (Fürsichsein) Hegel’s criticism of, 21, 88
atomism and, 127, 132–136 hypothetical imperative vs., 6
collapse of true infinity and, 127–132 morality and, 41, 300
immediacy and, 155 naturalism and, 12
infinity of, 144 thought in, 219
measure concept and, 149 “universal law” test, 21
social atomism and, 136–140 Catholicism, Hegel’s discussion of, 310
Spirit and, 276–279 causation/causality
subjectivity and, 240 absolute concept of, 204
being-in-and-for-self determination vs., 151
in Doctrine of Concept, 241 “movement” of, 224
in Doctrine of Essence, 155–159 substance and, 199–202
reflection-determination and, 176 ceasing-to-be (Vergehen), Hegelian concept
being-in-itself (Ansichsein) of, 57
Hegelian concept of, 66–69 Chemism
limit of, 67 externality and, 242
quality and, 157 Hegelian Idea and, 249
“being itself” concept, 64 of objectivity, 240
being-towards-death, Heidegger’s concept universality of, 263
of, 258 Robert Williams’ discussion of, 292
being-within-self (Insichsein), 59, 64 chemistry, “specified” measure, Hegelian
atomism and, 135 concept of and, 148–149
negation and, 74 Chisholm, Roderick, 22
negativity and, 86 Christianity. See also divinity; religion
as reality, 75 Absolute Spirit and, 310
Beiser, Frederick C., 54 Doctrine of Concept and, 315
Berkeley, George (Bishop), 54, 93, 114, Hegelian immortality and, 256
115, 161 Hegelian theology and, xxx–xxxi, 105,
subjective idealism of, 244 315
Berlin, Isaiah, 25 Kant/Hegel comparisons about, 44–47
Biblical authority, Hegelian theism and, 44 representation in, 314
326 index

Christianity (cont.) constitution

singularity and, 315 ethical life and, 303
“unhappy consciousness” and, 46 state and, 306
civil society “contemplation,” Hegelian “striving” and,
ethical life and, 303–305 85
state and family in, 305, 306 content
“classical” (beautiful) art, Hegel’s measure and, 147
discussion of, 313 and objectivity, abstract
Code Napoléon, 304 Self-consciousness and, 285
Cognition contingency
absolute Idea and, 260 absolute necessity and, 195
death as genesis of, 253 actuality and, 192, 197
and identity with others, 320 Henrich’s discussion of, 193
Hegel’s response to skepticism contract, Hegel’s discussion of, 7–8
developed in, 114 Contradiction
Idea as, 258–260 contrariety and, 189–190
immortality and, 256 of determinate being and finitude, 79
as life’s going beyond itself, 262 of morality, 300
Cohen, G. A., 99 diversity as, 253
coming-into-being (Entstehen) in Doctrine of Essence, 82
Hegelian concept of, 57 Düsing’s discussion of, 177
of Nature, 277 of the finite, 70–76, 284
common-sense ontology. See also Hegel’s doctrine of reality of, xxviii
understanding from opposition to, 184–190
diversity and, 180 reality as, 177
external reflection and, 172 resolution of, calls for new conception of
will and, 236 determination, 190
“communitarianism,” 4 of self-feeling in an other, 252
individualism vs., 4 true infinity and, 187
comparison, likeness-unlikeness and, 181 contrariety, and contradiction, 189–190
compatibilism copulation (Begattung)
contrasted to Kant/Hegel view of “death” of individual and, 253
responsibility, 24–27, 82–83, 209, genus concept and, 274
234 “corporation,” Hegel’s discussion of, 304,
Hegel differs from, 83 305
Hegel thought to endorse, 82 Corpus Hermeticum, 106
Concept. See Doctrine of Concept cost-benefit calculation, Hegelian thought
concreteness and reason and, 117
abstractness/emptiness vs., 228–230 “creationism,” Absolute Spirit and, 277
of freedom, universal Self-consciousness “creative eternal Idea,” presupposed by
and, 290 Intelligence, 293
mutual recognition in Self-consciousness Crites, Stephen, 102
and, 291 critical thinking, what is essence of, 246
objective Spirit and, 299 Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 304
conscience, objective Spirit and, 299–302 Critique of Judgment, 119
Consciousness determining reflection in, 172
division overcome by self-consciousness rational psychology in, 279
and recognition, 172 teleology in, 242
object of, as Spirit, 290 Critique of Practical Reason, 21
subjective Spirit and, 283–292 ethics in, 232
unity with Self-consciousness, 284 immortality postulate in, 77
Constant, Benjamin, 305 God postulate in, 45
 index 327

Critique of Pure Reason, xxv determinate negation, 58

Antinomies of, 49 determinateness
Hegelian universality in, 221 being-for-self and, 144
Idea concept in, 243 essence and, 161
forms of intuition in, 293 in Doctrine of Concept, 215
metaphysics in, 246 “I” concept and, 221
theism in, 45 measure and, 150
Transcendental Deduction in, 225 of Spirit, 276
culture (Bildung), in civil society, 303, 305 determination, objective Spirit and, 300
custom (Sitte), objective Spirit and, 302 determining reflection
in Doctrine of Essence, 169, 172, 173
Dasein. See determinate being identity and difference and, 175–177
De Anima, 72, 245, 255 Kant’s concept of, 172
death “lost in the negation”, 237
of individual, 253–258, 274 positedness and, 173–174
Wolff’s interpretation of Hegel’s concept determinism
of natural, 275 infinity and, 75
De libero arbitrio, 197 Kant’s philosophy of freedom and, 50
Democritus, 136 responsibility and, 26
Descartes, René, 2, 9 voluntarism and, 26–27
dualism of, 295 deVries, Willem A., 245, 263
Guyer’s discussion of, 98–99 on absolute Idea, and individual ‘I,’ 287
knowledge argument of, 115 on “mechanical memory,” 296
ontology of, 101 Dewey, John, 2
“purification” stage in, 108 “dialectic.” See also Contradiction
desire of Hegel, xxviii
agent and, 41 Diderot, Denis, 44, 296
freedom and, 319 difference, reflection-determination and,
naturalism and, 15 175–177, 178–180
Plato on, 236 Differenzschrift (The Difference Between Fichte’s
rational authority and, 15–16 and Schelling’s System of Philosophy),
Self-consciousness and, 286 119–121
self-government and, 39–42 diversity (Verschiedenheit)
will and, 11–13, 16 difference and identity and, 179
determinate being (Dasein) external reflection, 172
essence as self-supersession of, 177 identity and, 253
finitude and, 79 like and unlikeness and, 183
Hegel’s concept of, 48 of negativity, 263
Heidegger’s “thrownness” of, 191 reality as, 177
inner universality of nature and, 275 reflection-determination and, 180–184
limit/limitation and, 74 “divine command theory,” 43
measure and, 150 divinity. See also religion; theism
negation and, 59 of Absolute Spirit, 308
not an answer to atomism, 127 duality of human being and, 319
objective thinking and, 54–59 freedom and, 208–213
property and, 298 Hegel’s view of, 8–9
quality and, 59–64 Idea and “cunning” of reason and,
reality and, 90, 92–96 247–249
reflection contrasted with, 170 individualism and, 10
subjectivity originated in, 227 negativity as, 264
unity of being and nothing, 58 personhood in, 248
universality of living being not in, 275 self-sufficiency of, 240
328 index

Doctrine of Being “thought” in, 220

absolute indifference in, 158 totality in, 214, 237
diversity and, 180 transition to freedom in, 88
Doctrine of Concept and, 222 as transition to modernity, 91
immediacy in, 166 two kinds of universality in, 218–224
important for Hegel’s relation to will and, 233–237
Aristotle, 245 Doctrine of Essence
in-and-for-itself as upshot of, 155–159, absolute indifference and, 154–155
240 absolute necessity in, 196
“positing” understood so as to take actuality in, 190–192, 245
account of, 171 Aristotelian ideas in, 198
quantity and measure in, 131 atomism and, 127
in Science of Logic, 48 being-for-self collapse and, 142–143
“self-standingness” in, 164 being-in-and-for-self and, 155–159
subjectivity and freedom in, 211 contradiction in, 82, 184–190
Doctrine of Concept identity in, 175–177, 261
abstraction in, 237 immediacy and, 191
actuality and, 198 in-and-for-itself in, 155–159, 240
Aristotelian ideas in, 198 infinite determinateness and, 165
anticipated by Kant (according to necessity and freedom in, 190–192,
Hegel), xxv, xxvi 199–213
atomism and, 127, 260–265 necessity and search for knowledge in,
being-for-self collapse and, 142–143 259
being and, 55–59 negativity and, 164, 183, 189, 211, 217
being-in-and-for-self in, 159, 241 recollection in, 155
broad concept of selfhood in, 110 as reflection, 169–174
determinism and responsibility reflection-determination and, 176
addressed by, 26 reflection to actuality in, 190–192
Doctrine of Being and, 222 self-determination in, 210
“emptiness” charge clarified by, 231, 232 shine and negativity in, 159–169
estates and, 304 subject-object identity and, 168
freedom and, 52, 211 transition to concept in, 88
as “free love” and true infinity, 216–218 “doubling” of individual, Hegel’s
Hegelian theism and, 46 discussion of, 252, 263
identity and, 261 Self-consciousness and, 287
immediacy as objectivity in, 240 Doz, André, 53, 196
intuition and, 167 dualism
Kantian philosophy and, 220 Cartesian, 295
mechanism in, 172 connected with freedom, 319–322
mediateness of, 266 empiricism, true infinity and, 80–82
nature and, 271 and Hegel’s treatment of individualism,
nature “released” in, 269 xxv–xxvi
objectivity in, 239–243 Hegel doesn’t simply reject, 44, 294, 295
ontology in, 91 of Kant, 14, 26, 44
particularity vs. singularity in, 228–230 Kantian concept vs. intuition, 120
rationality as goodness in, 198 opposed by empiricism/naturalism, 80
reality in, 244 spurious and true infinity and, 77
soul in, 249 Dudley, Will, xxvi–xxvii
subject-object identity and, 168, 237–239 Düsing, Klaus, 53, 89
substance and, 214–216 on freedom, 212
substance-subject thesis in, 224–228 on Hegelian identity, 177
theism in, 101, 102 on substance-subject transition, 143
 index 329

Eckhart (Meister), 104, 106, 256 civil society and, 303–305

education, in civil society, 303, 305 customs of, 303
effect (Wirkung), causality and, 200 ethics. See also morality
egoism. See also rational egoism apparent emptiness of freedom and,
absolute Idea as refutation of, 260–265 20–21
civil society and, 305 free agent and, in “Quality” 72
“exclusive” singularity and, 262 of Hegel, xxxi, 6–7, 21, 232
Idea of life and, 257 individualism and, xxiii, 27–31
options for defender of, 168 of Kant, “emptiness” of, for Hegel, 21,
Emile, 305 48, 231–233
empirical science Kant on autonomy and, 39–42
freedom and, xxiii–xxiv, 1, 321 relation of autonomy to, Hegelian
empiricism reformulation of, 42–44
“compatibilism” and, 82 evil
Hegel’s critique of, 83 freedom and will and, 131
Kant and, 41 good vs., 320
philosophy and, 10 objective Spirit and, 299–302
true infinity and, 80–82 “exaggerated individuation,” Schmidt’s
volition concept of, 83 comments on, 196
“emptiness” “exclusive” singularity, egoism and, 262
concreteness vs., 228–230 existentialism, Hegelian “death” and,
in Doctrine of Concept, 231, 232 258
of Kantian ethics, 20–21, 48, 231–233 external determination, superseded in
of freedom, apparent ethical, 20–21 Hegelian “thought,” 117
Encyclopedia Logic, xxiv–xxvi externality
actuality in, 198 of nature, 275
freedom in, 210, 212 subjectivity in nature and, 270
infinity in, 295 external reflection
“reason” in, 198 in Doctrine of Essence, 169, 170, 172
singularity in, 234 immediacy and, 172
Stekeler-Weithofer on, 97 positing in advance and, 172, 182
theology in, xxv–xxx, 96 diversity and, 180
true infinity in, 49, 82, 87–88
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 5, 73 faith
condemned by Kojève as theistic, 46 Absolute Spirit and, 310
Concept ascends from nature in, 270 knowledge and, 116–118
nature becomes Spirit in, 19 Faith and Knowledge, 71, 116
rational autonomy clarified in, 19 Hegel’s critique of Kant in, 246
Engels, Friedrich, 209 “intuitive intellect” in, 121
Enlightenment true infinity outlined in, 118–119
critics of, 4, 312 family
Hegelian theism and, 44–47 civil society and state and, 306
individualism of, 4 Hegel’s discussion of natural difference
naturalism and, 100 in, 280
Romanticism’s critique of, 312 objective Spirit and, 303
enthusiasm (Schwärmerei), Hegelian feeling (Gefühl/Empfindung), Hegelian
theology and, 105 concept of,
Epicurus, 136, 139, 142 family and, 303
essence. See Doctrine of Essence intuition as, 293
estates, 304 sensation and, 282
estates general, Hegel’s discussion of, 307 Ferrarin, Alfredo, 53, 245
“ethical life,” 302–307 Fetscher, Iring, 281
330 index

Feuerbach, Ludwig on Hegel’s recognition argument, 289

Cohen’s discussion of, 99 on skepticism, 110
on Hegelian idealism, 95, 125 Franco, Paul, xxvi
on Hegelian theism, xxx, 46, 99, 102 Frankfurt, Harry,
on immortality of soul, 256 “free actualities,” Hegelian concept of,
on transcendence in Hegelian theology, 196
99 freedom
Fichte, J. G., 71, 84, 116 of agent, 141–143
apperception in philosophy of, 227 Anglo-American philosophers of, 82
Hegelian spurious infinity and, 124 apparent ethical emptiness of, 20–21
in Hegel’s Differenzschrift, 119, 120 as arbitrariness, 133
idealism of, 160 atomism and, 127
on identity, Hegel’s response to, 177 being-within-self and, 74
nature-morality relation of, 146 cultural commitment to individualism
on “positing,” 169 and, 1–4
subjectivity in philosophy of, 283 desire vs. reason and, 319
fideism, Hegel’s discussion of, 116 Doctrine of Being and, 49
Figure (Gestalt), animal functioning and, Doctrine of Essence and transition to,
273–276 88–90
finite evil and, 132
contradiction and, 70–73, 284 Hegel’s “standard” that reflects, 19, 37
freedom and, 208 Hegel’s theory of, xxvi–xxix, 5, 6–7, 10,
Guyer’s critique of Hegel’s critique of, 99 11
Hegelian concept of, 66–69 its fundamental agreement with Kant’s
infinite and, 69–73 and Fichte’s, 125
Pippin’s discussion of Hegel’s critique human subject vs. natural object and,
of, 68 320
reality of, 43, 90, 249 human vs. divine beings and, 208–213,
is only as a transcending of itself, 77, 248 319
Theunissen’s critique of Hegel’s critique of origin of nature, 268
of, 78 infinity and nature and, 73–76, 86
finitude Kant and Hegel’s philosophies
contradiction in, 79 compared, 22–27, 49
as means to being-in-itself, 67 Kantian conception of, 50–52, 72, 87
negativity and, 86 love and, 216–218, 321
reality and, 85, 249, 301 master and bondsman relationship and,
Taylor’s interpretation of Hegel’s 288
critique of, 122–126 nature and, xxiii, xxvii, 14, 51–52
is only as a transcending of itself, 77, 85, necessity and, 209
101 objectivity and, 289
true infinity and, 254 of objects, Self-consciousness and, 287
“first-person” perspective, 13 philosophical concepts of, 22–27
role of in relation to reality, 14 property and contract in context of, 7
“fool,” Hobbes’s rational choice theory promoted by state, 306
and, 28–29 as rational autonomy, 18–20
forms reality and, 141–143
Aristotelian concept of, 216, 244 reciprocal action to, 203
Hegelian “formism,” 244 reproduction of genus and, 257
Platonic concept of, 38, 112 in Science of Logic, xxvi–xxviii
of intuition, subjective Spirit and, 293 self-transcending being and, 74
Forster, Michael N., skepticism or despair about
on dualism, 294 (European), 1
 index 331

as slavery for the inclinations, 18–20 Guyer, Paul, 51, 60

social atomism and, 137 Descartes and Hegel compared by, 98
spurious and true infinity and, 76–80 on Hegelian infinite, 125
substance-subject thesis and, 88–90 on Hegel’s critique of the finite, 73, 121
Trendelenburg’s discussion of, 203 on Hegel’s early critique of Kant, 246
will and, 15, 297 on Hegel’s determinate being, 69
“free love,” as feature of finite things, in and Hegel’s critique of Kant’s notion of
Idea, 263 intuition, 167
Concept as, 216–218
and universal Self-consciousness, 291 habit (Gewohnheit), Hegel’s discussion of,
Freemasons, 46, 106 282
friendship, Aristotle on, 39 Halper, Edward, 93
Hardimon, Michael, 198, 199
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 227 Hartnack, Justus, xxvii
Gauthier, David, 29–31 Harrelson, Kevin Joseph, 102
on egoism, 263 Harris, Errol E., 124
Plato and, 31–39 Hartmann, Klaus, xxvii
on rational choice theory, 131 Hegel, xxx, 122, 209
on social atomism, 139 Hegel, G. W. F.
“genus” (Gattung) Kant and, xxiv, xxv
animal functioning and, 273–276 political and religious controversies
assimilation and, 273 concerning, xxix–xxxii
death of individual and, 254 reformulation of Kant’s argument from
freedom and, 320 ethics to autonomy by, 42–44
Hegelian universality and “identity with Western philosophical tradition and, 92
other” and, 250–253 Heidegger, Martin, 2
individuality and, 261 atomism and, 135
soul and, 279 being-towards-death concept of, 258
true infinity and, 255 on Hegelian theology, 103–109
Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, thrownness concept of, 191
313 Henrich, Dieter, xxvii, 102, 166
“given,” Hegelian critique of, 159–169 on contingency, 193
subjective Spirit and, 293 Hermetic philosophy, 46
as embodying thought, 167 Hegelian theology and, 106–109
Glaucon (Plato), 32 Magee’s overview of, 106, 108
social atomism and, 139 history, Hegelian philosophy of, 126, 307
Gnosticism, Hegelian theism and, 46 Hobbes, Thomas, xxv
God. See divinity; theism agent and action discussed by, 23
going into itself (Insichgehen), 156, 162 atomism and philosophy of, 142
good compatibilism of, 209
vs. evil, 320 egoism in philosophy of, 263
knowledge and promotion of, 259, 262 empiricist compatibilism and, 82
objective Spirit and, 302 ethical theory of, xxxi
government (Regierung), Hegel’s discussion ethics and individualism in philosophy
of, 306 of, 27–31
Greek atomism, 134 on individualism, 10
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 21, Kant and, 41, 50
42 Plato and, 31–39
and Hegel’s critique of Kantian ethics, rational choice theory and, 131
232 social atomism and, 137, 138, 139
moral law in, 40 Horstmann, Rolf-Peter, 89–90, 143, 212
standpoint of freedom, 50 human function, Aristotelian concept of, 53
332 index

humanist critics of Hegel, 104 reason and actuality and, 243–246

human needs Spirit and, 276
in civil society, 304 state and, 306
individualism and, 3–4 subjective Spirit and, 293
“master and bondsman” (Herr und subjectivity of, 258
Knecht) concept and, 288 truth and, 245
human rights, individualism and, 2–3 idealism, Hegel’s, xxviii, 54, 213
Hume, David, xxv, xxvii contrasted to subjectivism, 54
agent and action discussed by, 23 comparable to Plato’s idealism, 116, 296
apparent atheism of, 45 negativity-true infinity argument and, 90
compatibilism of, 209 reality/ideality and, 92–96
empiricism of, 80, 82, 161 self-determination and, 168
ethical theory of, xxxi “thought is being” and, 296
on freedom and self-governance, 50 idealism, Plato’s, 116, 296
on individualism, 10 idealism, subjective (Berkeley), 54, 93, 244
Kant and, 41 idealism, transcendental (Kant), 54, 94,
on knowledge of physical world, 2 100, 191
on reason and passion, 12 ideality
Hutcheson, Frances, 41 “realism/idealism” argument and, 92–96
Huxley, Aldous, 105 as reality, 188
“hyperquality,” negation and, 64–66 identity
hypothetical imperative, categorical absolute difference and, 176
imperative vs., 6 difference and, 178
of finite/infinite, 125
“I,” Hegelian concept of, 220–221 Hegelian concept of, 175–177, 261
absolute Idea and, 287 with other individual, 253
Consciousness and, 283 mutual recognition and, 320
division of, 283 negation and, 175
individual vs. absolute, 263 reflection-determination and, 175–177
Kant’s theory of knowledge and, 223 of Self-consciousness with its object, 286
as object of self-consciousness, 283 “identity with the other,” the “genus’s”
particularization and singularity of, 233 universality and, 250–253
Self-consciousness as ‘I = I,’ 285, 286 imagination, subjective Spirit and, 294
Iber, Christian, xxvii, 166 immanentism
on diversity, 177 Stekeler-Weithofer’s description of
on Hegelian identity, 177 Hegel’s Logic as, 96, 97
on Hegel’s idealism, 177 “immanent character,” self-determining,
Idea. See also Absolute Idea, Hegelian 219
concept of immediacy
as cognition or spirit, 258–260 assimilation and, 273
becomes self-knowing science, 268 being-for self and, 144
“cunning” of reason and, 247–249 of individual perishes in copulation, 253
in Doctrine of Concept, 219 desire of Self-consciousness and
Hegelian concept of, 55–59, 94, 198 negation of, 286
Kant’s concept of, 243, 246 in Doctrine of Essence, 191, 215
as life, 249–250 external reflection and, 172
metaphysics of, defensible, 246 Hegel’s new treatment of, in “Essence,”
new concept of individuality in, 262 166
objective Spirit relies on, 299 necessity and, 209
objectivity of, 258 negativity and, 164, 166
from objectivity to, 243 objectivity and, 239
rationality of, 236 of reflection, 169
 index 333

shine and negativity and, 159–169 initial decision (Entschluss), freedom of

substance’s, 201 Idea and, 268
immediate determinacy, Hegel’s objection “inner specifying unity”
to Kantian, 161 absolute indifference and, 155
immoral autonomy, Kant’s denial of measure and, 150, 152, 263
possibility of, 21 intelligence
immorality, will and, 40 Hegel’s account incompatible with
immortality physicalism/behaviorism, 295
Hegel’s view of, 256 subjective Spirit and, 293–298
Kantian postulate of, 77, 256 as “thought,” 296–297
Plato’s discussion of, 255 international law, state and, 307
in-and-for-itself intuition
Doctrines of Being and Essence and, Kant’s concept of, 161, 167, 293
155–159, 240 knowledge and, 161, 167
identity of absolute Idea, 264 theoretical Spirit and, 293–298
of matter (Sache), 239 “intuitive intellect,” Hegel’s discussion of,
of objectivity, 240 121
“incompatibilism” inwardizing (Insichgehen), 155, 156. See also
in Anglo-American philosophy, 82, 83 recollecting
how Hegel relates to, 82–83 of essence, 224
Kantian version of, 209 Inwood, Michael
individual/individualism on absolute Idea and individual ‘I,’ 263,
critiques of, xxiii–xxiv 287
cultural commitment to, 1–4 on skepticism, 110
“death” of, 253–258, 274 on “striving” vs. Hegel’s true infinity,
divinity and, 10 83–84
division within, 280 irritability, Hegelian concept of, 250
ethics and, 27–31 Irwin, T. H., 36–37, 39
freedom and, 321 on Aristotle, 36
Hegel’s concept of, xxv–xxvi, 11, 27–31 on Kant on rational prudence, 42
Hegel’s endorsement of, 5–9 on Plato, 33, 36
human rights and, 2–3
Kant’s articulation of, 21 Jacobi, F. H., 60, 116
knowledge of physical world and, 2 Jaeschke, Walter, 102, 256
needs and social relationships and, 3–4 on Hegel’s three syllogisms, 318
temperament of, 279 judgment (Urteil)
infinite determinateness Absolute Spirit and, 314
Doctrine of Being and, 164 Hegelian Concept and, 237–238
Doctrine of Essence and, 165 immediate singularity in, 248
infinite/infinity. See also spurious infinity; “thought” and, 297
true infinity universality of Self-consciousness and,
“affirmative determination,” 78 286
being-in-itself and, 159 justice, Plato on, 31–39, 41
finite and, 69–73
freedom and nature and, 73–76, 86 Kant, Immanuel
humanist criticism of, 104 agent and action discussed by, 23–27
Kierkegaard on Hegel’s “bad infinite,” on treating agent “merely as means,” 141
80 Antinomies of, 49
measure and, 150 apperception in philosophy of, 227
infinite progress autonomy principle of, 6–7, 20, 49
desire of Self-consciousness and, 286 Categorical Imperative of, 219, 231
quantitative vs. qualitative, 146 determining reflection concept, 172
334 index

Kant, Immanuel (cont.) on Hegel’s metaphysics and theology,

Doctrine of Concept and, 220, 221 84, 103, 105
dualism of, 14 religious philosophy of, 118
his response to egoism, 40, 232 “kingdom of ends” (Kant), 50
ethical theory of, xxxi, 16, 301 Hegel’s universal Self-consciousness and,
autonomy in, 42–44 290
“emptiness” of, for Hegel, 231–233 kleptomania,
fideism of, 116 agent vs. action and, 25
on freedom, 22–27, 87, 197 Ayer’s discussion of, 83
on “good will,” 33 “knowing subjectivity,” as goal of state, 306
Guyer’s defense of, 121 knowledge
Hegelian spurious infinity and, 79 of Absolute Spirit, 308–312
in Hegel’s Differenzschrift, 119, 120 absolute spirit’s science and, 317
Idea and concepts of reason of, 243, art and, 312–313
246 concept vs. intuition in, 121
idealism of, 160, 296 faith and, 116–118, 310
incompatibilism of, 209 Hegelian true infinity and, 109–116
individualism of, 10 Hegel’s theory of, xxvii, 109–116
influence on Hegel, xxiv–xxv, 53 “I” concept and Kant’s theory of, 223
intuition concept of, 161, 167, 293 Kantian intuition and, 161, 167
“kingdom of ends” of, 50, 290 Kantian “critical” thinking and, 246
on knowledge, 121 promotion of good and, 259, 262
his view of metaphysics, 246 Kojève, Alexandre, 46
moral theory of, 31 on Hegel as atheist, 97
nature-morality relation of, 146 on Hegelian theology, 102
noumenal/phenomenal world of Korsgaard, Christine, 13
freedom and, xxvii, 13, 26, 50 Kraut, Richard, 33
Hegelian theism and, 45
spurious and true infinity and, 77, 124 Lakebrink, Bernhard, xxvii
ontological argument critiqued by, 101 language, Hegel’s discussion of, 295
Plato and, 34 law
rational autonomy concept of, 6–7 in civil society, 304
morality as, 70–72 state and, 306
young Hegel’s critique of, 85 Law of Non-Contradiction, 188
rational choice theory compared to, 138 Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 115
Schelling’s critique of, 5 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, xxx
his self-determination contrasted with philosophy as “service of God” in, 310
Hegel’s “negativity,” 65 critique of spurious infinity in, 98
subjectivity in philosophy of, 225, 283 true infinity in, 119, 223
teleology of, 242 “Left Hegelians,” xxviii, xxix–xxx
theism of, 44–47, 127 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 125, 160, 207,
transcendental idealism of, 54, 94, 100, 279
191, 223 Leucippus, 136
two standpoints of, 75 Leviathan, 28–29
on will, 10–17 libertarian theory of freedom and
will and philosophy of, 233 responsibility, 22
Bernard Williams’ critique of, 40 life
Wood’s critique of, 40 absolute Idea and, 260
Kierkegaard, Søren cognition and, 262
compared to Hegel’s “atomism,” 135 doubling of individual and, 287
“disillusionment” prediction of, 84–85 freedom and, 257, 287
on Hegel’s nation of spurious infinity, 80 Hegelian Idea as, 249–250
 index 335

immortality and, 256 Hegelian Concept and, 216–218

in Philosophy of Nature, 271 feature of finite things, in Idea, 263
likeness, identity and difference and, 181 ultimate reality a freedom
limit (Grenze), Hegelian concept of, 68. See indistinguishable from, 321
also finitude 68
finite and infinite and, 69–73 madness, Hegel’s discussion of, 282
Guyer’s discussion of, 121 Magee, Glenn Alexander, 46, 106, 108
negation of the negation and, 86 on Hegelian theology, 106–109
of quantity, 145 on Hegel’s claims to knowledge, 109
limitation (Schranke), 70 manifestation
living being. See also being, life identified with revelation, 314
assimilation in, 273 of inner identity, Hegelian discussion of,
effort to build its singularity into 206
universality, 274 in Doctrine of Concept, 214, 229
self-division within, 274 of God, Absolute Spirit and, 314
Locke, John, 60, 161 Marx, Karl, 95
Logic Cohen’s account of, 99
absolute necessity in, 196 critique of Hegel by, 304
atomism in, 127, 133 Hegel compared with, 95
Being, Nothing, and Becoming triad, “master and bondsman” (Herr und Knecht),
55–57 Hegel’s concept of, 288–289. See
being and finite in, 187 also slavery
being concept in, 5, 55–59, 189 materialism. See also atomism, Democritus,
being-in-itself and, 67 Feuerbach, Marx, naturalism,
cognition and, 260 physicalism/behaviorism, Thales,
contingency in, 193 Theunissen
determinations from, in consciousness, Hegel’s affinity to, 295–296
284 transcendence in, 94–95
discourse in, 91 matter (Sache)
egoism in, 263 in Doctrine of Essence, 239
freedom in, xxvi–xxviii, 49, 206, 209 necessity and, 259
justice in, 39 objectivity and, 241
modern relevance of, xxx, xxxii–xxxiii will and, 300
nature and spirit from, 268–270 McDowell, John, 161
negativity and, 14, 49 Gadamer and, 227
objective thinking in, 53–54 on Hegelian subjectivity, 225–228
ontology and, 91 meaning, name and, 296
rational autonomy discussed in, 19 measure (Mass)
rational egoism and, 142 determinateness and, 168
reality in, 189 atomism and, 130, 131
Sache selbst concept in, “inner specifying unity” and, 150, 152,
self-transcending being and, 73 263
social atomism and, 139 quantity and, 145
subjectivity in, 225, 226–228 union of quality and quantity in,
substance-subject thesis in, 89 147–152
syllogism of, 318 “mechanical memory,” 296
Taylor’s discussion of, 203 Mechanics/Mechanism
theism in, 46, 48, 97, 217 diverse objects of, 261, 263, 264
true infinity and, 14, 49, 120, 295 externality of, 270
Love Hegelian Idea and, 249
and universal Self-consciousness, 291 of objectivity, 240
as rational, xxviii, 118 Robert Williams’ discussion of, 292
336 index

mediatedness, Hegelian concept of, Nagel, Thomas, 13

266 “name,” language as, 295
mediation, immediacy as, 215 “name-retaining memory,” 296
Meditations, 2, 108, 115 national Spirits dialectic, 307
memory (Gedächtnis), language and, 296 natural difference (Naturunterschied),
metaphysics Hegel’s concept of, 280
Hegel’s view of, 91–92 naturalism
modernity and, 91–92 action and philosophy of, 15, 23–27
rational defense of, 246–247 desire and, 12
Metaphysics (Aristotle) Enlightenment form of, 100
self-thinking thought in, 265, 317 not whole of “reality”, 14
Hegel’s Absolute Spirit and, 317 philosophy and, 10
Metaphysics of Morals, ethics in, 232 rational choice theory and, 28–29
“Method,” as being and result, 265–267 spirit and, 19
Miller, A. V., 145, 160, 201, 228 Natural Law, 21
modality nature
Hegelian concept of, 192 as rational (Hegel and Schelling), 120
as self-determination, 207 externality of, 275
modernity freedom and, 14, 50–52
homesickness and, xxiv Hegel on impotence of, 228
metaphysics and, 91–92 infinity, freedom, and, 73–76
“moment” and “result,” 58 inner universality of, 275
monarchy reality of, 90
Bosworth’s discussion of, 307 self-sufficiency in, 61
power and, 306 spurious and true infinity and, 79
Montesquieu, Baron de (Charles-Louis de subjectivity within, 270–276
Secondat), 306 syllogism of, 318
morality transition from Logic to, 268–270
in Categorical Imperative, 41 necessity
Hegelian theology and, 45 actuality and, 193
Hegel’s characterization of Kant’s ethics freedom as appreciation of (Engels),
as, 21 209
Kant’s theory of, 31, 70–72 immediacy and, 209
Hegel’s critique of, 231 reciprocal action, 204
objective Spirit and, 299–302 search for knowledge and, 259
in Philosophy of Right, 301 to freedom, 190–192, 199–213
rational choice theory and, 30 true infinity and, 88–90
moral law, in Groundwork of the Metaphysics negation
of Morals, 40 atomism and, 127, 132–136
Morals by Agreement, 30–31 being-within-self and, 74
motion, Hegel’s discussion of, 241 determinate, 58
mutual recognition determinate being and, 59
particularization of Self-consciousness Doctrine of Concept and, 215, 223
and, 290, 320 Hegelian “something” (Etwas), 63
in Phenomenology of Spirit, 290 identity and, 175
Self-consciousness’ concreteness and, of immediacy, desire of
291 Self-consciousness and, 286
universal Self-consciousness and, philosophers’ discussion of, 61
mysticism quality as, 60–64
Hegelian immortality and, 256 quantity and, 147
Hegelian theology and, 104, 105 self-sufficiency and, 63
rationalism and, 109 Taylor’s discussion of, 63
 index 337

negation of the negation, Hegelian family and, 303

concept of, 64–66 in Spirit as a whole, 277
“negative” freedom, 25 morality, conscience and evil and,
“negative theology,” 256 299–302
negativity in Philosophy of Right, 265
and Absolute Idea, 264 right, property, and wrong and, 298–299
not clarified by Wolff, 186 objective thinking
Doctrine of Being and, 48–49 being and, 54–59
Doctrine of Concept and, 266 in Hegel’s Logic, 53–54
Doctrine of Essence and, 173, 183, 211 objectivity
identity and, 261 abstract Self-consciousness and, 285
immediacy and, 164, 166 in Doctrine of Concept, 91
“inner specifying unity” and, 263 of Idea, 258
negation of the negation and, 64–66 immediacy and, 239
opposition and contradiction and, 186 in-and-for-itself and, 240, 243
shine and, 159–163, 169, 205 Judgment and Syllogism and, 239
survives Doctrines of Being and Essence, and Anselm’s ontological argument, 239
88 and the good, 259
true infinity and, 86–88 subjectivity to, 237–239
Neuhouser, Frederick, xxvi transition to Idea, 239–243
Nicolin, G., 256 Oetinger, F. C., 46
Nicomachean Ethics, 27, 108 “On the Relationship of Skepticism to
end as activity in, 84 Philosophy,” 5, 109
friendship in, 39 ontological argument for God, 101, 239
human function in, 235, 255 ontology
Nietzsche, Friedrich, xxv relevance of Kant to, 223
Hegelian negation of the negation and, seen as obsolete, 91
86 “ontotheology,” Heidegger’s concept of,
on Kant’s Categorical Imperative, 17 105
on the self, 65 opposition (Gegensatz)
“nodal line” (Knotenlinie) of to contradiction, 184–190
measure-relations, 149 “reality” as, 177
non-being as reflection-determination, 180–184
of quantum, 147 O’Regan, Cyril, 46, 256
Non-Contradiction Principle, 111 Orlando, 254
nothing, 55 other-determination
noumenal world negation of the negation and, 86
Hegelian theology and, 45 self-determination and, 65
Kant’s concept of, xxvii, 14, 26, 50 ought (Sollen)
spurious infinity and, 77 Absolute Spirit and, 318
Nozick, Robert, 42 atomism and, 141
desire and, 319
Obedience to rules, rational choice theory and transcending finitude, 182
and, 29–31 Hegelian concept of, 57
object (Gegenstand) “I” concept and, 221
of Consciousness, 283, 284 Kant’s concept of, 221, 222
of “recognition,” 289 morality and, 301
objective reality, conceptual relations in, 226 in physical world, 241
objective Spirit self-determination and, 169
Absolute Spirit and, 309 Taylor’s analysis of, 125
basic principles of, 298 true infinity and, 110
ethical life and, 302–307 ownness, being and, 294
338 index

“panentheism” concept, 103 Philosophy

pantheism, 98, 103 Absolute Spirit and, 310, 315, 316–318
particularity freedom and, 307
opposition of heaven and earth, 314 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 2
of the concept, 214–216 Philosophy of Hegel, The, 209
of Self-consciousness, 286, 290, Philosophy of History, “cunning” of reason
320 and, 247
of the will, 233 Philosophy of Nature, xxix
singularity and, 228–230 atomism answered by, 127
Pascal, Blaise generation of space and time in, 294
critic of rationalism in theology, 105 nature’s transition to Concept in, 270
religious philosophy of, 118 ontology in, 91
passive substance, Hegelian concept of, rational egoism and, 142
201, 214–216 response to egoism in, 265
pathological love, 18 selfhood in, 72
Kant’s concept of, 18 side-by-sideness and, 172
Patten, Alan, xxvi subsumed in Absolute Sprit, 318
Peel, Robert (Sir), 304 treatment of, in this book, xxxii
Peirce, C. S., 60 Philosophy of Right, xxvi
“perceiving” (wahrnehmend), Consciousness actual-rational concept in, 197, 199, 245
as, 284 “actuality” in, 246
Perennial Philosophy, 105 atomism and, 127
personhood Categorical Imperative discussed in, 89
divine, Concept and will in, 233–237
objective Spirit and, 298 desire discussed in, 14–15
Phaedo, 33, 36, 255 endorses Kantian autonomy, 71
phenomenal world ethics in, 232
Hegelian theology and, 45 family discussed in, 280
Kant’s concept of, xxvii, 13, 26, 50 freedom discussed in, 52
spurious infinity and, 77 indeterminacy described in, 10
phenomenology, Consciousness and Spirit Kantian morality critiqued in, 231
and, 283 Kant’s reason/desire relation overcome
Phenomenology of Spirit, 53 in, 19
alienness in, 44 Logic prepares the way for, 48
Categorical Imperative discussed in, 88 morality in, 301
critical of Hegel’s previous approach, objective Spirit in, 265, 298
119, 120 political misunderstanding of, xxix
critique of “given” in, 293 property and contract discussed in, 7–8
does not “reject” dualism, 294 rational-actual dictum in,
freedom in, 11 rationality of justice presupposed in, 39
infinity in, 295 self-governance in, 6, 7
parallels EG’s “phenomenology,” 283 self-transcending being and, 73
objective thinking in, 54 social philosophy issues in, 1
“recognition” in, 292 “standard” to assess desires in, 37
Sache selbst concept in, 113 universal, particular, and singular in, 276
Self-consciousness in, 287 will discussed in, 16–17, 297, 299
as response to skepticism, 109 Philosophy of Spirit, xxvi, xxix
subjectivity in, 225 Absolute Spirit in, 318
substance-subject thesis in, 89, 224 atomism and, 127
supposed atheism of, 46, 97 as response to atomism, 127
“unhappy consciousness” in, 44, 98 Cognition concept in, 114
 index 339

Concept ascends out of nature in, 270 positing in advance (Voraussetzen)

division of Consciousness superseded in, causality and, 201
172 external reflection and, 172, 182
ethics in, 232 of nature, 277
freedom discussed in, 7, 52, 90, 211 reflection and, 170–171
justice in, 39 positing (Setzen)
Logic prepares the way for, 48 in the Concept, 215
nature as spirit in, 98 negativity and, 173
objective Spirit in, 298 real necessity and, 194
rational egoism and, 142 reflection as, 169–174
response to egoism in, 263, 265 possibility, actuality and, 203
“recognition” argument in, 289 postmodernism
“thought” concept in, 211, 212, 220 freedom and, 321
treatment of, in this book, xxxii Hegelian negation of the negation and,
physicalism/behaviorism, Hegel’s 86
alternative to, 294, 295 individuality and, xxiii
Physics self-determination and, 65
Hegelian concept of, 270 power
specified measure and, 148 bureaucracy and, 307
Physics (Aristotle), 245 monarchy and, 306
Pinkard, Terry, 64, 104, 256 state and, 306
Pippin, Robert, xxvii, 68, 124, 221 Theunissen’s discussion of, 217
“plan of Povidence,” Hegel’s discussion of, of the universal, 217, 218
307 “presence in it,” 67
plant life, Hegel’s discussion of, 250, 272 Price, A. W., 39
Plato, 9 Principle Doctrines, 137
anti-atomism in, 258 probabilism, 301
Aristotle and, xxv–xxx “process of recognition,”
on ascent of desire, 236 Self-consciousness and, 286
Butler and Reid agree with, 42 Proclus, 104
ethical theory of, xxxi, 43, 219 “progressive alteration” (Fortgang seiner
Hegel and, 34, 53, 112 Veränderung), measure and, 150
Hegel’s Idea concept and, 243, 244 property
Hegel’s relation to, 53, 112 Hegel’s discussion of, 7–8, 299
higher reality of, 118 objective Spirit and, 298–299
idea concept of, 94 Protagoras, 36
idealism of, 116, 296 prudence, Kant’s discussion of, 40–42
on the individual, 10 psychological traits, agent vs. action and,
on justice, 33, 41 24
on love, 118, 291 “Psychology” section, in Hegel’s subjective
political community of, 311 Spirit, 293
practical reasoning concept of, 27 public authority, Hobbes on obedience to,
recollection (anamnesis) of, 29–30
“reproduction” in Symposium of, 250, 255 Putnam, Hilary, 296
on self-government, 39
social atomism and, 138, 139 “Quality,” Hegel’s chapter on
soul in Republic of, 235 absolute indifference and, 152–154
Watson’s relation to, 27 Absolute Spirit depends on, 277
on will and justice, 31–39 and contradictoriness of morality, 301
Plotinus, 104 atomism and, 127, 135
“police,” Hegel’s discussion of, 304 being-in-itself and, 157
340 index

“Quality,” Hegel’s chapter on (cont.) reality

determinate being in, 59–64, 284 achieved by the inquiring mind, 112, 114
echoed in “Difference,” 178 atomism and, 133
empiricism/naturalism and, 81 being and, 57–58
Kantian dualism and, 80–82, 88 cognition and, 2, 5–6, 112, 114, 115–116
measure and, 147 degrees of, 61–62
response to skepticism in, 115 in the Concept, 244
reformulated and defended under of finite things, 43, 90, 247
“Necessity,” 210 of freedom, 141–143
quantity idealism and, 92–96
absolute indifference and, 152–154 Kantian two standpoints of, 45, 75
determinateness and, 168 in quality, 60–64
atomism and, 130, 131 in “Quality” chapter, 51–52
measure and, 147 rational authority and, 112
unity and, 143–147 God and affiliation with, 8–9, 321
quantum, Hegelian concept of, 145–147 self-sufficiency of, 61–62, 264
alteration of, 150 as self-transcendence of the finite, 247
measure and, 150 transcendence and kinds of, 100
Quine, W. V. O., 161 true infinity and, 113, 133
unity and, 63
random conversion, of contingency, 193 reason
rational autonomy. See also autonomy desire vs., 10–17, 19
freedom as, 18–20 Idea and actuality and, 243–246
Kant’s concept of Idea and “cunning” of, 247–249
Hegel’s critique of, 18–20, 85, 265 love and, xxviii, 291
morality as, 70 Gauthier’s reconciliation of morality
Kant’s concept of, 17 and, 31
rational choice theory passion and, 12
atomism and, 131 Self-consciousness and, 285–292
criticized in advance by Plato, 31–39 subjective Spirit and, 293
Hobbes as predecessor of, 28–31 truth of, 230, 245
morality and, 30 reciprocal action
a normative, not just descriptive, theory, causation and, 204
137 freedom and, 202–208
overview of contemporary, 29 “recognition”
rational egoism Hegel’s concept of, 289–290
atomism and, 141–143 master and bondsman relationship and,
ethics and, xxiii, 3 289
Hegel’s discussion of, xxxi not a mutual-congratulation club, 289
negativity and, 264 objective Spirit and, 299
Hegel’s reply to, 172 Redding’s discussion of, 292
rational functioning, freedom and, 50, 235 Self-consciousness and, 285–292
rationality/rationalism recollecting (Erinnerung), 155, 157, 162. See
actuality and, 198 also inwardizing
in Hegelian theology, 108 Redding, Paul, 292
one of two themes in Kant’s philosophy reflection
of freedom, 50 to actuality, 190–192
Magee’s comments on, 106 Consciousness as stage of, 283
mysticism and, 109 Essence as, 169–174
as Syllogism, 238 nature as stage of, 277
voluntarism and, 25–26 thing-in-itself and, 191
 index 341

reflection-determination Kant/Hegel view of, 22–27

difference as, 178–180 natural “determinism” and, 26
diversity to opposition in, 180–184 naturalist view of, 23
identity and difference as, 175–177, voluntarist or libertarian view of, 22
261 “result” and “moment,” 58
individuality and, 262 revelation (das Offenbaren)
religion and, 314 equivalent to “manifestation,” 276
reflection in itself, reflection- of god, Absolute Spirit and, 313
determination and, 180 right, objective Spirit and, 298–299
Reid, Thomas, xxvii, 22, 42 “Right Hegelians,” xxx
relation, Consciousness as stage of, 283 Rinaldi, Giacomo, 129
religion. See also divinity; specific religions on absolute indifference, 153
Absolute Spirit and, 309–312 Robinet, A., 296
what is false in traditional, 98 “romantic” art, Hegel’s discussion of,
Heidegger on, 103–109 313
individualism and, 4 Romanticism, Hegel’s agreement with,
representations of, 247 312
revealed, in Absolute Spirit, 313–316 Rorty, Richard, 2
self-determination and, 8–9 Rosen, Michael, 58
state and, 311 Rosicrucians, 46, 106
two senses of, in Hegel, 309 “rote memory,” 296
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 18, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
71 on civil society, 305
representation ethical theory of, xxxi
in Christianity, 314 Rumi, Jelaluddin, 104
intuition becomes, 294
in Hegel’s account of revealed religion, Sache selbst concept, 113
315 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 135
subjective Spirit and, 293–298 Scanlon, T. M., 12–13, 15
“reproducing memory,” 296 Schelling, F. W. J., 5
reproduction. See also copulation on “indifference,” 153
(Begattung) Hegel and, 119, 120
genus and, 261 on Hegel’s “creation” of nature, 270
Hegelian conception of, 250 on identity, Hegel’s response to, 177
Hegelian universality and, 250–253 nature-morality relation of, 146
in Plato’s Symposium, 250 Schiller, Friedrich, 18
Republic, 108 schizophrenia, agent vs. action and, 25
immortality of soul in, 255 Schmidt, Josef, 203
justice discussed in, 41 Schmidt, Klaus J., 162, 174
practical reasoning in, 27 “exaggerated individuation” discussed
soul discussed in, 235 by, 196
will and justice in, 31–33, 39 on Hegelian opposition, 184
repulsion. See also attraction on Hegel’s modality, 192
exclusive singularity and, 262 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 17
identity and, 176 Schueler, G. F., 13
quantity and, 145 Schulze, G. E., idealism of, 160
in atomism, 134, 138 science
resistance, social atomism and, 138 common sense and Hegelian logical,
responsibility 56
Anglo-American rationalist theorists of, knowledge and, 317
27 modern, and Hegel’s philosophy, 126
342 index

Science of Logic identity and, 261

discussed by Robert Williams, 292 reflection-determinations and, 179
doesn’t discuss familiar concepts, as reproduction and, 251
such, 180 universality and, 223
Doctrine of Being in, 48 will and, 235
egoism discussed in, 232, 297 self-knowledge, in Descartes and Hegel,
freedom discussed in, xxvi–xxviii, 7, 141 115
fulfils promises of Faith and Knowledge, self-relationship, indifference and, 154
246 self-standingness (Selbständigkeit), 158
how to approach, xxxii achieved through opposition, 185
judgment and syllogism in, xxviii in final sections of Being, 164
negativity in, 64–66, 87 of other individual, 252
part of search for knowledge, 259 persons, 303
self-determination in, 5 quantity and measure and, 168
theology in, xxx, 96 self-sufficiency
“thought” concept in, 211 of reality, 61, 264
“thought is being” thesis demonstrated self-supersession
in, 297 being-in-itself and, 157, 158
true infinity in, xxviii, 96, 119, 120 reflection-determination and, 177
Scotus, John Duns, 60 self-thinking, Hegel’s Absolute Spirit and,
“second-order desires,” in Frankfurt’s 317
critique of rationalism, 12–13 self-transcendence
Sein und Schein, xxx, 205 contra atomism, 127
Self-consciousness finite and infinite and, 72, 73–76, 85,
Christianity and singular, 314, 315 247, 248, 255
egoism and, 297 freedom and, 74
Hegel’s concept of, 11, 172 infinity, freedom and nature and, 73–76
“I” as object of, 284 Sellars, Wilfrid, 161
master and bondsman relationship and, sensation (Empfindung), true infinity and,
288–289 281
objective Spirit and, 299 sexual relationship
recognition, reason and, 285–292 discussion of, 280
selfhood and, 284 for-itself/in-itself division in, 280, 281
singularity of, 315 shine (Schein)
unity with Consciousness of, 284 critique of “given” and, 159–169, 293
universal, 290, 291 in Essence, 159–169
and “free love,” 291 negativity and, 161–164
self-determination translation of, 160
in the Concept, 216 shining inward/outward, universality as,
in Essence, 210 218–224
freedom and, 207 side-by-sideness (Aussereinander), 270
idealism and, 169 external reflection and, 172
negation of the negation and, 65–66, 86 rational egoism and, 142
other-determination and, 65–66 signs, Hegel’s concept of subjective Spirit
universality and, 219 and, 294–295
self-equality, reflection-determination and, singularity
173 abstraction and, 237
self-feeling, Hegel’s discussion of, 282 of Concept, 214–216, 248
self-government. See also autonomy exclusive, 262
desire and, 39–42 individuality and, 262
selfhood, Hegel’s conception of, 110, 116 of “I,” 233
determinate being and, 284 particularity and, 228–230
 index 343

revealed religion and, 314 as finitude’s redeeming transcendence,

of Self-consciousness, 315 255
Self-consciousness’s desire and negation from Logic to nature to, 268–270
of, 286 Hegel’s response to skepticism is
skepticism embodied in, 114
Hegelian true infinity and, 109–116 Idea as, 258–260
Kant’s dualism vulnerable to, 14 Idea that has arrived of its being-for-self,
recent publications on Hegel on, 110 276–279
slavery. See also “master and bondsman” nature becomes, 19
(Herr und Knecht), Hegel’s concept reality that corresponds to living thing’s
of inner universality, 275
concept of will and, 233, 236 syllogisms of Logic, nature, and, 318
of indinations, freedom as, 18–20 Taylor’s interpretation of, 125
true infinity and, 85 true infinity underlies, 46
Smith, Adam, 7 will as, 297
social atomism. See also rational choice “Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate, The,”
theory; rational egoism 18, 44
Hegel’s view of, 136–140 spurious or “bad” (schlechte) infinity,
present-day influence of, 131 Hegelian concept of, 76–80
social contract theory abstract Self-consciousness and, 286
atomism and, 136 given up, in true infinity, 130
in Plato, 32–33 our habitual conception of God and
social relationships, individuality vs., 3–4 humans, 208
Socrates, 109, 112 immortality and, 256
“something” (Etwas) Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophy as, 124,
Hegel’s concept of, 5 223
negation of the negation and, 63 Kierkegaard’s view of, 80
Sophists, 137 “ought” and, 301
soul (Seele), 216, 249 “negative theology” and, 257
Concept is not merely, 261 self-determination of finite as, 123
Leibniz-Wolff doctrine of, 279 self-transcendence of, 77
Plato on immortality of, 255 Stace, W. T., 195, 209
subjective Spirit and, 279–283, 292 standard (or “measure”) to assess desires,
space and time, Hegelian “genus” and, 37
251 “standpoints” of Kant, 14, 75
specification, determination and, 151 true infinity supersedes, 48
“specified” measure, Hegelian concept of, state
148 civil society and family in, 305, 306–307
Spinoza, Baruch (Benedictus), 53 ethical life and, 303
Hegel and, 53, 61, 120 international law and, 307
Heidegger on, 103 religion and, 311
notion of intellectual intuition, 119 Steinberger, Peter J., xxvii
subjectivity in philosophy of, 283 Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin, xxvii, 102
theology of, 207 interprets Hegel as immanentist, 96, 97
“Spirit as Such,” subjective Spirit and, Stoics, Butler and Reid agree with, 42
292–298 “striving”
Spirit (Geist). See also objective Spirit; term stems from Fichte, 84
subjective Spirit Inwood and Kierkegaard vs. Hegel on,
as Consciousness’s object, in universal 83–86
self-consciousness, 290 subjective Consciousness, Absolute Spirit’s,
death as genesis of, 253 312
344 index

subjective happiness, as what is good for on Hegel’s Spirit, 99, 122, 264
people (Kant), 41 Hegel’s “ought” concept discussed by,
subjective Spirit 125
Absolute Spirit and, 309 on Hegel’s “self-generating totality”, 204
Consciousness and, 283–292 on reality and negation, 51, 61, 63
Hegel’s discussion of, 277 on substance-subject transition, 142
soul and, 279–283 social atomism discussed by, 131
“Spirit as Such” and, 292–298 teleology
subjectivity Idea and, 249
determinate being and, 59–64, 227 of objectivity, 240
in the Idea, 258 Thales, 94
idealism and, 54, 93 theodicy, absolute necessity and, 197
“movement” of causation yields, 224 theology/theism, Hegelian, xxx–xxxi,
natural soul yields, 281 44–47
within nature, 270–276 absolute necessity and, 197
to objectivity, 237–239 compared to Kantian theology, 44–47
present since “Quality,” 91 Heidegger’s critique of, 103–109
promotion of the good and, 259 in Logic, 48, 217
substance true infinity and, 96–102
causality and, 199–202 theoretical Spirit, 293
yields Concept, 214–216 “theory of the good” (unexamined), 36
substance-subject thesis, 54, 88–90 theory/practice distinction, overcoming,
criticized by Taylor, Düsing, and 222, 223, 244, 291–292
Horstmann, 89–90, 142 “Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis” triad,
in Doctrine of Concept, 224–228 xxxii
supersession (Aufhebung). See also Theunissen, Michael, xxvii
self-supersession, determinate on Hegelian finitude, 51, 78, 96
negation echoes Marx’s critique of Hegel’s
determinate being and, 58 “mystification,” 96
Hegelian “something” (Etwas) and, on Hegel’s theology, xxx, 217
63 thing-in-itself, reflection and, 191
Hegelian theology and, 102 thing (Sache), objective Spirit and, 298,
Swabian Pietists, 106 302
Syllogism (Schluss) third-person perspective, 13
Concept and, 238–239 “thisness,” philosophers’ concept of, 60
(pl.) of revealed religion, 314 “thought,” Hegelian, 211, 212
(pl.) of Logic, Nature, and Spirit, 318 Absolute Spirit and, 315
“thought” and, 297 being and, 296
symbolic (sublime) art, Hegel’s discussion in Doctrine of Concept, 220
of, 313 self-determination and, 219
Symposium, 38, 112, 118 theoretical Spirit and, 293–298
on ascent of desire, 236 “thrownness,” Heidegger’s concept of,
“reproduction” discussed in, 250, 255 191
totalitarianism, Hegelian philosophy and,
Taylor, Charles, xxx, 27, 209, 243 126
criticizes Hegel’s true infinity, 122–126, totality, Hegelian concept of, 214–216
254 Concept’s self-loss and, 237
on Essence/Concept transition, 88, 142, ethics and, 232
203 universality and particularity as, 234
Harris’s critique of, 124 will and, 233
Hegelian philosophy of history criticized “traditional values,” individualism and,
by, 126 xxiii
 index 345

transcendence. See also self-transcendence contradiction and, 189

of freedom, 223 Hegel’s critique of, 172
Hegelian discussion of, 97–102, 217 “negative theology” and Hegel’s critique
Feuerbach’s, critique of Hegelian, 99 of, 256
Transcendental Deduction (Kant), 225 “unhappy consciousness”
transcendental idealism (Kant), 54, 94, Ameriks’ discussion of, 46
100, 191 Hegelian theism and, 45, 98
Trendelenburg, Adolf, 80, 203 traditional Christianity and, 44, 46
Trinity, Hegelian account of, 248 unity
true infinity, Hegelian concept of. See also absolute indifference and, 152
infinite/infinity of consciousness (Kant/Hegel), 220
abstract Self-consciousness and, 285 in Doctrine of Essence, 159
atomism and, 127, 134 in family, 306
and appropriation of what is true in of finite/infinite, 125
Kant, 71 Hegelian reality and, 63
and the issue about determinism and “inner specifying,” 150, 152, 155,
responsibility, 26 263
being-for-self and collapse of, 127–132, quantity and, 143–147
141–143, 237, 281 subjectivity and, 226
contradiction and, 186, 187 universality. See also abstract universality,
concrete universality and, 230 Hegelian discussion of
derivation of, 19 abstractness of, 228
Doctrine of Being and, 48–49 concrete, 235
early statements of, 118–122 in the Concept, 214–216
empiricism and dualism and, 80–82 “death” of individual and, 253–258
ethics and, 320 determinateness and, 218–224
freedom and, 53 empty, 229
Heidegger ignores, 103–109 “genus” and “identity with other” and,
in the Concept, 216–218 250–253
knowledge and skepticism and, in Hegel’s interpretation of Kant, 221
109–116 of living being, 274
negation of the negation and, 86–88 of Nature, 275
quality, quantity and measure triad and, revealed religion and, 314
147 as Right, 298
role of the finite in, 254, 255 power of, 217, 218
reality and, 113 of rules, two kinds of (A. Wood), 40
reality/ideality and, 92–96 of Self-consciousness, 286, 288–292
search for immediacy and, 155 selfhood and, 223
“slavery” of the indinations and, 85 sharing of needs as, 288
spurious infinity and, 76–80 of will, 12, 233
“striving” and “actuality” and, 83–86 “universal law” test, of Categorical
substance-subject thesis and, 88–90 Imperative, 21
Taylor’s interpretation of, 122–126 unlikeness, identity and difference and,
theism and, 46, 96–102 181
transcendence and, 102
will and, 235 Valentinian Gnosticism, 46
truth Van Inwagen, Peter, 22
Hegelian Idea and, 245 violence, Idea and “cunning” of reason
of reason, 230 and, 247
void, atomism and, 136
understanding (Verstand), Hegelian volition, empiricist concept of, 83
concept of, 117 Voltaire, 45
346 index

voluntarism intelligence as, 297

“compatibilism” and, 24–27 Kant and Hegel on, 10–17
“determinism” and, 26 personal will (Eigenwille), 288
freedom and responsibility and, 22–23 Plato on, 31–39
Hegel’s “arbitrariness” and, 234 William of Ockham, 207
Kant’s philosophy of freedom and, 50 Williams, Bernard, 12–13
rationalist alternative to, 25–26 on Kant, 40
von Schlegel, Friedrich, 301 on will, 15
Williams, Robert R., xxxi
war, Hegel’s discussion of, 307 on Hegel’s “recognition,” 292
Wartenberg, Thomas, 93 Williamson, Raymond Keith, 103
Watson, Gary, 27 “willing” (das Wollen), as pursuit of good,
Weisse, C. H., xxx 258
welfare (Wohl) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2
in civil society, 305 Wolff, Michael, 186, 245
objective Spirit and, 300 on Hegel’s account of natural death,
Western philosophical tradition, Hegel’s 275
view of, 92 on Hegel’s “Anthropology,” 279
Westphal, Kenneth R., 54 on Hegel’s affinity to materialism,
on Hegelian ontological idealism, 93 295–296
on Hegelian realism, 115–116, 222 Wood, Allen, xxvi, xxxi
on skepticism, 110 actual-rational concept interpreted by,
will 198
and genesis of the “one,” 131 on Hegel’s criticism of Kant, 21, 231
autonomy and, 19–21 on Kant, 40, 41
freedom and, 15, 125 Woolf, Virginia, 254
good and evil and, 300 world-history, 307
Hegel’s Concept and, 233–237 wrong, objective Spirit and, 298–299
of an immoralist, 40
zero (die Null), resolution of contradiction,
186