Lukács and Hegel on Teleology

György Lukács (1885-1971)

This post considers the theological implications of apparent purpose in nature in the light of Hegel-scholar György Lukacs’ analysis of teleology and the human labour process.

Introduction (Stephen Cowley)

György Lukács’ The Young Hegel (1975) marked an important step in Hegel scholarship, setting Hegel's thought in relation to its political-economic origins and circumstances. In this post, I share my metaphysical analysis of a key chapter on “Labour and the Problem of Teleology”. Lukács remarks in it that “Hegel fails to notice here [in the Phenomenology of Spirit] that the consistent application of his own teleological principle leads him back into the old theological conception of teleology.” (363) I argue that, in rejecting the old theological notion, under which an infinite agent is a bearer of purposes beyond those of the human mind alone, Lukács is playing a variation on the subjectivist tune of Wilhelm Dilthey's critical view of Hegel, albeit in a revolutionary rather than a patriotic key, with the international proletariat replacing the German spirit in the role of God. I conclude that the perennial common sense alternative to subjectivism is a theistically-grounded realism.

Teleology is purpose in nature. For example, when it is said that the plants in a rain forest “struggle to reach the sunlight”, a purpose is attributed imaginatively to the plants by way of an explanation of their growth. Kant accepted this mode of interpretation as a “regulative” aspect of our understanding of organic nature, but not as “determinative”. It will yield predictions, but only by setting the bounds of what is possible as an intelligible account. The matter is somewhat more complicated when we come to animals to whom we attribute purposes analogous to our own. Our self-understanding is at a slightly higher level again, as our purposes are revised by ratiocination and have a more extended structure of means and ends. The fundamental observation is that empirical reality contains not only order and structure in general, but apparent purpose in living organisms that counteracts the second law of thermodynamics (that “entropy [or disorder] increases”).

The question is whether we are entitled to Hume’s conclusion (at the end of the Dialogues on Natural Religion) that the cause or causes or order in the universe may bear a remote analogy to the human mind. On my reading, despite his hostility to Dilthey’s “bourgeois” scholarship, Lukács in fact shares his subjectivist views of purpose. For Lukács, purpose is vindicated as a mental act on the part of the labourer, or proletariat collectively, to whom a world-view of their own (dialectical materialism) is rather awkwardly attributed.  His view of teleology is thus fundamentally subjectivist. Lukács later describes Hegel’s view of teleology as “the negation of a brilliant conception by an unbounded all-engulfing process of generalization.” (545) This misrepresents Hegel’s correct identification of the universal presuppositions of objective teleology.

The remainder of this post is my notes from Part Three Chapter Six of The Young Hegel, with my own comments in support of my view enclosed in square brackets.

Labour and the Problem of Teleology

Early German edition of Lukács' The Young Hegel (1948)

Lukács pauses his economic analysis to consider the nature of teleology (i.e. purposive activity) in general. He notes that Marx wrote in Capital (170): “We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human.” (338) Marx means by this that we imagine our end-goal before we realize it. The labourer realizes a purpose, which determines his action and to which he subordinates his will. The purpose of economic activity is consumption. Lukács here launches into a scornful attack on the ideas of God and a divinely ordained purpose, in the course of which he invokes Engels, Hobbes and Spinoza. He writes:

“The philosophy of the modern world had failed utterly to clarify the problem of purpose. Philosophical idealism, quite unaware of the human character of purposiveness, had projected purpose onto nature where it had sought – and found – a bearer to vouch for it, namely God.” (338-39)

 For this reason, Engels derided the “shallow teleology of Wolff” (339) in Dialectics of Nature, adding that Spinoza and the French materialists sought to explain the world from itself. Engels remarks that this view of Wolff would have it that cats were created to eat mice and mice to be eaten by cats. [The example of predation introduces a sarcastic tone, directed against a presumed Pangloss. The point is not further developed. – SC] In rejecting the idea of objective purpose, Lukács remarks, the arguments of such thinkers “led them logically enough to the complete repudiation of the concept of purpose however defined.” (339) Thus Hobbes and others repudiated teleology in all its forms. Hobbes says that final cause can be replaced by efficient cause in accounting for beings with sense and will (De Corpore). Lukács cites Spinoza’s Ethics (I, Appendix): “all final causes are nothing but human fictions.” Spinoza knew that final causes play a role in human affairs, but he thought them subjective. Thus Spinoza wrote: “A final cause, as it is called, is nothing, therefore, but human desire.” (Ethics, IV, 284) A desire is an efficient cause, but men consider it primary because they do not know the cause of their desires. Lukács comments that this “overlooks the specific dialectic of purpose and causality in labour.” (340)

[It seems then, that labour is to play a similar role to the pre-rational grasp of a vision of the world in Dilthey in subverting the piety of an objective understanding of the world. Lukács is soon blown off course into an overly general analysis of the purposes of the labourer. This puts the cart before the horse by prioritizing means over the ends that determine their value. This mode of argument seems to go back to Ricardo and A. Smith’s labour theory of value. – SC]

Kant and Teleology

Kant “asked a number of new questions about teleology” (340) and German philosophical discussion was carried on at “a relatively high level” (340). Hegel benefitted from Kant’s work. Beginning with Kant will also “provide us with ammunition against the more recent theories of the history of philosophy which attempt to show that Hegel merely continued what Kant had begun” (340) [This is likely a reference to Wilhelm Windelband or Richard Kroner. – SC] Lukács seek to steer a middle course between the view of classical German philosophy as “a single undifferentiated unity” and the opposite fallacy that Hegel lived in an intellectual vacuum. Kant made one negative and three tentative positive steps. Negatively, he rejects the old teleology (1st Critique) Positively, he:

• reconceived human action and morality (2nd Critique, leading on to Fichte) 
• conceived of art as “purposiveness without a purpose” (3rd Critique, leading on to Schiller, Schelling and Hegel) 
• began a discussion of the organic sciences (3rd Critique)

In the 1st Critique then, Kant interpreted nature in terms of efficient causality (albeit in a subjective way), leaving no room for teleology. However, his view of morality in the 2nd Critique was that man was an “end-in-himself” (not just a means). Lukács describes this as “an ideological revolt against the treatment meted out to human beings in the system of feudal absolutism.” (341). [It would seem to be of a wider scope though. – SC] It “reflects the moods of the period of the French revolution” (341). Lukács says of Kant’s moral theory: “Objectively, this theory again opens up an unbridgeable gulf between man and nature, between purpose and causation.” (341) In effect then Kant (and Fichte) reproduced the old view of teleology. Fichte sees nature as a mere backdrop to freedom. Hegel says: “Fichte’s philosophy thus shares the assumption common to all teleology that nature is nothing in itself but only in relation to something else.” (341; from Faith and Knowledge). He also mentions Voltaire’s satirical treatment of teleology [Candide, presumably, – SC]

Secondly, Kant’s aesthetics, according to which art manifests “purposiveness without a purpose” became central to aesthetic discussion. Schiller extended it in the direction of objective idealism [in his Letters on Aesthetic Education]. It also influenced Schelling and Hegel. Lukács cited his own books Goethe and his Age [available in English] and Contributions to the History of Aesthetics for further analysis.

Thirdly, Kant discusses organic life directly in the second part of the Critique of Judgement. He sees causality and purpose as mutually exclusive alternatives, positing that this is a limit of human knowledge (i..e. knowledge of the origin of apparent design). [The example Kant uses is the hollow bones, wings and tail feathers of a bird, which appear designed for flight. – SC] Lukács says that Darwin was the “Newton of the organic realm” that Kant thought would never come. Kant recommended only a “regulative” use of the idea of teleology, but endorsed a stronger “constitutive” use of the idea of mechanical causation.

Kant claims that our understanding proceeds from universal to particular. Hence we could only discern the purpose of a particular being by reference to a universal law. However, the particular contains something contingent in addition to the universal. Hence, its purpose cannot be deduced a priori.  Thus, although judgements of purpose are necessary, they cannot determine objects [that is, yield reliable predictions. – SC] He then conceives the idea of an “intuitive understanding” that would not proceed from universal to particular. He concludes that such an “intellectus archetypus” is inaccessible to human understanding.

Post Kantian Speculation

Goethe, Schiller and Schelling simply overrode Kant’s agnostic objections on the limits of human knowledge. Kant and Fichte had seen nature as a passive arena for human action, or as a frontier delimiting its boundaries. Schelling had tried to advance beyond the Critique of Judgement, but only fell into abstract assertion of mysticism. He saw the world as activity, with the distinctive feature of human activity being that it was conscious. Lukács says with rare sympathy: “His aim was to bring about the unity of man and nature by means of an idea which in itself was not without profundity.” (346) [Lukács’ main discussions of Schelling are later in the book and in Destruction of Reason. – SC]

Lukács turns to Engels for enlightenment. In Dialectics of Nature, Engels sees Kant and Hegel as both endorsing the idea of inner purpose in the form of impulse. Engels wrote: “Mechanism applied to life is a helpless category.” (344) So the ideas of impulse and inner purpose were introduced into science. They were embodied in the theories of Lamarck. While the Romantics on the other hand merely declaimed about the unity of man and nature, Hegel thought the matter out concretely.

Hegel on Tools and Teleology 

Hegel first analyses teleology in relation to labour and the use of tools: see the lecture notes of 1805/06. Tools are preferable to the object of desire itself, for they are general rather than particular. Tools are inert objects, but given motion, e.g. by watch-springs, water power, wind power, etc. Lukács says that Hegel thus: “locates conscious human purposes concretely, within the overall causal network.” (345) He adds: “every working man knows instinctively that he can only perform those operations with the means of objects of labour that the laws or combinations of laws governing those objects will permit.” (345) Hence invention consists in applying concealed causal relationships in the labour-process. [As Lauderdale pointed out, such knowledge is in fact held in a higher degree by mechanics and engineers, though to an extent it is common knowledge. – SC] Lukács says:

“The specific nature of final causes as both Hegel and Marx correctly saw is just that the idea of the objective to be attained comes into being before the work-process is set in motion and that the work-process exists for the purpose of achieving this objective... It is indeed self-evident that the final cause is itself causally conditioned – as Spinoza insists.” (345)

[This seems dubious. In the Scots catechism for example, the chief end of man is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” In what sense is such an end “causally conditioned”? If the conditioning is so self-evident, why is Spinoza’s insistence relevant? – SC] Lukács goes on to suggest that this “self-evident” truth was unknown to Hegel. He says: “This insight did escape Hegel since he derives the labour-process from immediate need and then constantly reduces all perfected labour-processes to their social origins and ultimately to man’s impulse to satisfy his essential wants.” (345) The analysis “makes the dialectical unity of cause and purpose more transparent.” By this, Lukács seems to mean reciprocal causation for, he explains: “For it becomes perfectly obvious that the breadth and depth of man’s knowledge of cause and effect in nature is a function of the purposes man sets himself in the work-process.” [I am reminded of the English proverb, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Even if we conceive the self as essentially agent, with John Macmurray, curiosity is a distinct drive from work.  – SC] So basically, we cannot change the laws of nature, but we can make them work for our own purposes. Lukács says:

“Thus Hegel’s concrete analysis of the human labour-process shows that the antinomy of causality and teleology is in reality a dialectical contradiction in which the laws governing a complex pattern of objective reality become manifest in motion, in the process of its own constant reproduction.” (346)

I cite this not for the illumination it gives, but as a rare descent into waffle at a key point of Lukács argument, contrasting with his usual lucidity. Lukács turns again to the question of the relative value of ends and means. He notes that mediation is linked to the idea of human progress and says:

“since the ends were inevitably idealized and since they were the product of a consciousness, idealist philosophies always placed a higher value on them than on the means. In the earlier teleologies, theological motives were clearly at work, since the authority which guaranteed the ends was always God.” (347)

This is correct, but Lukács opposes to it only “an utterly sincere and revolutionary sense of the dignity of man.” (347) It seems at this point that he fundamentally shares the subjectivist views of contemporary existentialists and the Diltheyan Lebensphilosophie it was built on, though he opposes them on political grounds. Hegel, Lukács continues, also sees the end as higher than the means, at first in the case of immediate needs, but also later when immediacy is replaced by progress. There is necessity at work in this. However, the labour of the servant is the vehicle of progress, while the master remains confined by immediate needs and their satisfaction. In the labour-process we do not meet with “infinite progress”, but “the constant self-reproduction of human society at an ever-higher level.” (348) Lukács concludes: “For this reason, Hegel can rightly say that tools, the means, are more valuable than the ends for which they are employed, i.e. than desire, the impulse to satisfy one’s needs.” (348) [Hegel’s contemporary James Mylne’s view of desire as itself guided by reason seems relevant here. The conclusion seems more general than the reasoning warrants. To take a counter-example, we do not naturally suppose that the bread, wine and communion cup, the hymn book and church building, are more valuable than the impulse to worship God on the part of a religious community. – SC]

Hegel next made use of these ideas in the treatment of teleology in his Logic. Lukács goes on to argue that the Logic in this regard harks back to economic analysis of 1805/06 and that this explains the use Lenin made of it as background to historical materialism. Lenin quotes from the Logic:

“since the end is finite it has a finite content; accordingly it is not absolute or utterly in and for itself reasonable. The means however, is the external middle of the syllogism. To that extent the means is higher than the finite ends of external usefulness: the plough is more honourable than those immediate enjoyments that are procured by it...” (348, Science of Logic, Miller, 747)

The instrument is preserved, the immediate enjoyments pass away. Hegel concludes: “In his tools man possesses power over external nature, even though, as regards his ends, nature dominates him. (349; Ibid) In the Logic, Hegel says that teleology, human labour and practice are the truth of mechanism and chemism. Lenin gave a running commentary on these passages (see his Conspectus of Hegel’s Logic). Lenin relied on the section on “Subjective end”. Thus Hegel reinterpreted the place of human practice in the system of philosophy. This is included in Marx’s praise of German philosophy for developing the “active side” of reality (Theses on Feuerbach). Hegel placed his “practical idea” above the “theoretical idea” in his Logic. Here the practical idea rejects externality as real and subordinates it to “the ends of the good”. The will bars the way to its own good if it separates itself from cognition. Hence, Hegel says: “The idea of the good can find its complement only in the idea of the true.” (351; Science of Logic, 821) Lenin saw Marx as following Hegel’s lead in incorporating practice into the notion of objective (in Hegel, absolute) truth. Lukács sees Hegel’s idea of economics and teleology as “of cardinal importance for his entire philosophical system” (356). Theory and practice are no longer separate, as in Kant and Fichte. In part, this is a return to Hobbes and Spinoza, but with a more dialectical notion of man’s “active side”. Lukács claims that in Hegel “The relationship of theory to practice was thereby clarified in a manner unknown in philosophy up to that date.” (352) [This seems like an overstatement. In Aristotle, tools are well known as means (Nic. Eth.), but to the end of leisure and the communal practice of virtue. It is also a separate end to make tools that are durable. – SC] Lukács claims that Hegel’s insight sheds light on issues including:

• freedom and necessity 
• contingency and necessity

However, Hegel’s lapse into idealist mystification is also related to his defective grasp of economic concepts at “the very point at which, for various reasons, his knowledge of economics lets him down and his understanding of society loses itself in the miasma of mysticism.” (352) Despite this, Lukács writes: “Hegel is surprisingly conscious of economic problems and their philosophical implications.” (352-53) [The path from economics to an irreligious clarification of society’s undecided purposes remains unclear, though some relevant steps have been made earlier in the book. – SC]

Lukács claims: “He [Hegel] is fully aware that the categories of action emerge most fully in the sphere of economics.” (353) [This may be true, as co-operative action is likely to have an economic aspect, but this is consistent with the ends of action transcending economic categories. – SC] Lukács cites Hegel’s view on natural law as being a reflection of ethical reality, as indicative of his likely views on method in economics. He comments: “The problem of freedom and necessity is concretized above all by being placed in a specific socio-historical framework.” (353) Subjective idealism had isolated the concept of freedom from “the real world of history and society”. Lukács comments: “Hegel’s study of the modern world represents an effort to comprehend the isolation of the individual with the aid of classical economics.” (353) - a statement of uncertain scope. Hegel later wrote in the Philosophy of Right:

“this medley of arbitrariness generates universal characteristics by its own working, and this apparently scattered and thoughtless sphere is upheld by a necessity which automatically enters it. To discover this necessary element here is the object of political economy.” (353; PoR para 189, Add’n 268)

This happens through “mutual interlocking of particulars” and the reciprocal action of various spheres of activity. [This is one of a trilogy of chapters on economics in Part Three of the book.  It seems to me that this relies on the economics of A Smith, Ricardo and Say. The political economy of James Mylne on which I have written in Rational Piety and Social Reform (2015) strikes me as offering a more holistic account of economic activity by reinstating the priority of use-value abandoned by Smith. The priority of use-value over exchange-value then impacts on the question of teleology by refashioning and restoring the notion of conscious purpose. – SC] Lukács cites Engels on freedom as the appreciation of necessity (from Anti-Duhring). On Hegel’s view, “history is the real framework for freedom..” (354) Lukács invokes Hegel’s idea of the “cunning (List) of reason” which moves through the passions of men. Hobbes, Mandeville and A Smith operate with this idea. Lukács writes: “The economics of Adam Smith provides all these theories with a firm foundation and its sober emphasis on the actual facts of the given situation shows how far these views can lead.” (355)

[It is perhaps unfortunate that Hegel’s manuscript commentary on James Steuart has been lost, as this would provide a partial contrast with Smith. – SC] Lukács cites some remarks about economics from the Jena lectures. Hegel describes the free market as “the cunning of the government” (1805/06 lectures) which lets the merchant sell utility, while it stands in the background. He returns to the theme of inventors and geniuses and relates this to the idea of world-historical individuals. Such personalities are subordinate to the objective tasks demanded of them. Lukács clarifies that this is in connection with the contrast of necessity and contingency, not necessity and freedom. He complains about “vulgarisers” of the Second International who overemphasised historical necessity – and claims that Lenin and Stalin restored a role for personality. He cites a letter of Engels to the same effect.

[I omit sections in which Lukács discusses the concepts of nation, power-politics and German Imperialism and makes some remarks about Schelling. This ranging across topics is typical of the diffuse style of parts of his book in which several balls are kept in the air at once. – SC] Following on from the remarks on Schelling, Lukács makes the following remark:

“For objective idealism [...] nature and history are the product of a “spirit”, and since this is so, it follows that the old conception of teleology must inevitably recur [...] For if history is an object which is guaranteed by a unified subject, if it is indeed the product of that subject’s activity, then, for an objective idealist like Hegel, history itself must realise the purpose which the “spirit” had posited as a goal from the outset. In consequence [...] the whole process [...] is thereby transformed into a pseudo-movement: it returns to its starting point, it is the realisation of something that had always existed a priori.” (364)

Lukács cites the “reason as purposive activity” section of the Phenomenology (Baillie trans. 83). This itself cites Aristotle. Arguably an action that has no obstacle is defective as an action (a “pseudo-movement”), at least in human terms. We then find this gem of a conclusion in the midst of the atheist presentation: “Hegel fails to notice here that the consistent application of his own teleological principle leads him back into the old theological concept of teleology.” (363) Whether Hegel failed to notice this is questionable in light of Lukács’ later account of Absolute Spirit. However, Lukács continues:

“His great philosophical achievement had been to take the concept of purpose down from heaven, where the theologians had placed it, and bring it back to earth, to the reality of actual human action. His conception of teleology remained great, original and creative as long as it remained earthly. But by taking his ideas to their logical conclusion he destroys as an objective idealist what he had laboriously built up as a dialectician.” (363)

In my view, the insistence on practical significance on earth is praiseworthy, but the idea that this excludes ultimate claims is dogmatic. The objection to a philosopher “taking his ideas to their logical conclusion” is unintentionally humorous, unless the intention were to circumvent Stalinist censorship. This was written at the period of the Moscow show trials, after all. However, Lukács makes the same objection on page 520 and is perhaps using the expression to indicate an absence of balance. Lukács calls this a “theological twist” to Hegel’s thought and comments:

“Before Hegel had lost his ways in the miasmas of idealism where a mystified demiurge carried on its “activities”, he made a great detour in the course of which he made innumerable fundamental dialectical discoveries. He then pushed forward to that frontier which no idealism can cross.” (363)

The equation of “spirit” with the Platonic image of a demiurge (from the Timaeus) is striking. However, the concept of God as an agent from the creation on is Biblical.

Conclusion

The issue of outright idealism (in a phenomenalist sense) is irrelevant here, as religion is normally framed within a common sense dualism of mind and matter. However, whilst a “national spirit” may be (is) an idealized projection, the idea of God setting bounds to our thoughts and deeds is a metaphysical inference from the presence of purpose (and more generally order) within experience and creation. Lukács’ insistence on the purely subjective and human boundaries of purposiveness is itself a dogmatism – or at least has not been presented by Lukács in his book as more than this. As a result, Lukács and his colleagues did not do justice to the piety of the class-divided communities whose economic and political systems they sought to remake by the light of a presumed emergent proletarian consciousness.