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| Title page of first edition of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). |
Introduction (Stephen Cowley)
This is an exposition of the first third of chapter five (Reason) in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) on observation and self-observation. The chapter begins with a recapitulation of the first three chapters on consciousness of natural objects from a higher standpoint. However, Hegel soon turns to self-observation by way of examining the laws of logic and psychology understood from an empirical standpoint and the pretended sciences of physiognomy and phrenology. His main conclusion is that, whilst we find ourselves at first living in the world as social animals, our real character is not, or is scarcely, reflected in the abstract ideas or rules of logic and psychology, or in the study of our faces at rest (physiognomy) or by the peculiarities of how our skulls press on our brains, or vice versa, (phrenology), but rather is constituted by our individual and collective plans and their realisation, to which he turns in the remainder of the fifth chapter.
I have the particular purpose of identifying the use of key concepts from chapter four (Self-consciousness) in the rest of the book, in particular the themes of division and the relation to the unchangeable from the “unhappy consciousness” section and the general idea of life. My reading is influenced by paragraph 673 from later in the book, where Hegel produces a summary of the development of his thought: "The immediate existence of reason which, for us, issued from that pain [of the unhappy consciousness], and its peculiar shapes, have no religion, because the self-consciousness of them knows or seeks itself in the immediate present." The theme of religion in chapters four, six and seven is generally in abeyance in what follows.
The section on “Observing Reason” that I address here concerns observational science, after which Hegel proceeds in chapter five to the standpoint of the agent and a final third on "real individuality". What follows is a paraphrase of the Observing Reason section (with introduction) of the Phenomenology, supplemented by direct translation of key passages and my own digressions [which are enclosed in square brackets]. I omit material that is obscure or less important for my purposes. Translations are (usually) my own; paragraph references are to Pinkard’s translation.
Chapter Five - Introduction
The chapter begins by establishing its connection with the final "unhappy consciousness" section of Chapter four. Hegel writes:
“For the unhappy consciousness the in-itself is the beyond of itself. But its movement has resulted in placing the completely developed single individual, or the single individual that is a real consciousness, as the negative of itself. [...] Its truth is that which appears in the syllogism whose extremes appeared as held absolutely asunder, as the middle term which proclaims to the unchangeable consciousness that the single individual has renounced himself and, to the individual, that the unchangeable is for it no longer an extreme, but is reconciled with it.” (para 231)
This is a recapitulation of the last chapter and starts where it ends. The individual mind has the confidence that society, perhaps God, is behind him. Hegel says that “Reason is the certainty of being all reality [...] this reason, as immediately coming on the scene, does so only as the certainty of that truth.” (para 233) This sheds light on the use of “certainty” in chapter four. Certainty is opposed to “truth” (the truth of reason’s being all reality), as a project is opposed to its completion. Hegel proceeds to discuss “idealism”, which he eventually equates with “pure empiricism”. [This might be taken to be the Lockean "way of ideas" (that might indeed be equated with "absolute empiricism"), but perhaps something more Kantian, or Fichtean, based on the unknowable thing-in-itself or the idea of freedom, is meant. -SC]
Hegel refers to planting a flag of sovereignty in the world (para 241). [This image is drawn from colonialism (exploration, trading concession or victory in battle). One might object that Germany did not have colonies, though Prussia had an influence beyond its eastern borders. However, German influence extended through the Dutch and Belgian ports. For example, Steiger whose family Hegel tutored in Switzerland was well travelled and Jean-Jacques Cart, whose letters Hegel translated (1798) had spent time in the USA. Hegel’s illegitimate son later followed Steiger by travelling with a regiment to the Dutch East Indies, where he died in Jakarta. - SC]
A. Observing Reason
After a brief discussion of observation and laws in general, Hegel turns to organic nature. At this point, a resemblance with the idea of unhappy consciousness appears in the contrast of “observing reason” with organic nature itself, which is a version of man as a rational animal. This Aristotelian concept contains a dualism of the sort that the Romantics sought to overcome, as did Hegel in a different vein more consistent with his ideas of rational clarity.
Hegel then introduces the idea of life as a model of self-consciousness. He also does this at the start of chapter four. Self consciousness like life is constituted by distinguishing itself into moments. Hegel writes:
“Hence it [self-consciousness] finds in the observation of organic nature nothing other than this essence (Wesen), or it finds itself as a thing, as a life, and yet it distinguishes between what it itself is and what is found, but the difference is no difference at all.” (para 258)
There is a kind of rational instinct at work in this, but as instinct it is opposed to consciousness. “Hence its satisfaction is divided [entzweyt] by this opposition." (para 258) So here again the theme of division from chapter four re-emerges. [The centrality of the concept of life seems to be returning to Hegel-scholarship, most recently in the work of Karen Ng. The use of imagery of life is also Biblical and Hegel had drawn attention to this in his early manuscripts. -SC]
This section on Observing Reason is tripartite, covering observation of nature, observation of the mind and observations of the alleged relations between the two. Hegel writes:
"This consciousness, for which being has the significance of being its own, we now see entering again into sensation and perception, but not as the certainty of a mere other, but rather with the certainty of being that other itself." (240)
This process of inquiry is presented as an outcome of the unhappy consciousness, which outcome is presented as a confidence in our faculties, but the object of inquiry recurs at first to the consciousness section. [The air of over-confidence is mitigated by the assurance that we are dealing with "certainty" rather than "truth".One might see "reason" in this sense as an outcome both of consciousness and self-consciousness, rather than interpreting the chapter as simply a continuation of chapter four alone. There is a high-level dualism of observer and nature in the first section, but little that I can see to shed light on unhappy consciousness. - SC]
a) Observation of Nature
Hegel gives a treatment of description, signs and laws as applied to nature in general. Thereafter, he turns to observation of organic nature. There is a brief discussion of teleology. Then we turn to the biology of his day. Much observation of nature in the 18th century took the form of what was called natural history (e.g. Buffon) and medical speculations (e.g. Brown's medical theories). The design argument was popular, at least in Britain (i.e. Paley’s watch). There was also some speculative biological theorising in terms of "inner" and "outer" (purpose and reality), which Hegel finds vague. He proceeds to address the distinction of inner and outer. We are offered a critique of Kielmeyer's distinction of sensibility, irritability and reproduction (corresponding roughly to the modern nervous system, muscular system and the digestive and reproductive systems). There is some talk of self-preservation (Selbsterhaltung). [Kielmeyer, like Hegel, was from Stuttgart and studied in Tübingen. His essay on biology that Hegel draws on here is set to appear in English later this year (2020). - SC]
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| C.F. Kielmeyer (1765-1844). |
Reason, Hegel continues, turns from organic nature to the divergent elements, zones and climates to interpret natural kinds, but the kind of self-understanding this can produce is limited. [This may be a reference to Buffon and Montesquieu.]
b) Observation of Self-consciousness
This sub-section discusses logical and psychological laws. In the opening paragraph (298), Hegel distinguishes three objects for observational consciousness, inorganic nature, organic nature and self-consciousness. He now turns to the third of these, which are to be treated from the standpoint of idealism and by means of observation. [We appear here to be at the standpoint of Francis Bacon for inorganic nature and that of Locke or Condillac for self-consciousness. Hegel finds the “free concept” at work in self-consciousness, but does not define the term. -SC]
Logical Laws
Hegel devotes only three paragraphs to logical laws, suggesting that they will be more fully treated in his Logic. He does not even enumerate the laws he is talking about. If we turn to the Science of Logic (Doctrine of Essence, Determinations of Reflection), we would conclude that he means such laws as that of identity (“A is A”), excluded middle (“A is B or not-B”) and non-contradiction (“Not (A and not-A)”). [Formal logic was not a central theme of 18th century philosophy, for example Locke, Berkeley and Hume did not write on it, though there is a little known text by Condillac and it was used by Kant as a key to his categories. Hegel remarks that it was still taught “for the sake of a certain formal utility” (Science of Logic, Preface to 1st edition, Miller, 26). However, this was often through Latin textbooks and in an abbreviated form (see Hamilton’s 1833 essay). Gottfried Ploucquet’s was the textbook used when Hegel was a student in Tübingen. -SC] Hegel says of the laws of thought:
“To say then, that they have no reality (Realität) means in general nothing else than that they are without truth. They ought to be though, not the whole truth surely, but still formal truth. Yet the purely formal without reality is a mere creature of thought (Gedankending) or empty abstraction with no division (Entzweyung) in it, which [latter] would be none other than the content.” (299)
Here we see the concept of division interpreted logically. Hegel adds that the laws go without saying, or are simply assumed, in instances of clear thinking. It is only in a rarefied sense of observation that they are open to being observed at all. When they are found by observation they appear as an “array of separate necessities” (300), whose plurality contradicts the unity of self-consciousness. He goes on to describe them as “vanishing moments”.
In Hegel’s treatment, logical laws are subordinate to “active consciousness”, to which he now turns.
Psychological Laws
There is little dualism in this sub-section, other than the overarching one of observer and agent. The sub-section considers the idea of psychology as a search for laws of mental activity corresponding to outside stimuli (paras 302, 323). This is different and more limited than contemporary notions of psychology and no texts are referenced. Hegel concludes that there are no such laws, as there is always a right of refusal on the part of the mind. He writes:
"However, the individual is also universal. He immediately and steadily flows together with the universals at hand, customs, habits, etc. and adapts himself to them. He can adapt them, oppose them, even invert them. They may leave him cold. [...] psychological necessity is just an empty word in that, for what ought to have such and such influence, the possibility is present that it is not able to exercise it" (paras 306, 307)
This is similar to the idea of freedom and negation at the start of the Philosophy of Right. [The argument seems flawed to me. If I feel pain, I may choose not to avoid it, at least to some extent, but I cannot choose not to feel it. If I look at a blue sky, I cannot choose not to judge that it is blue. If I have been hill-walking, I cannot doubt the reality of the external world. This may not be true logically, but it is a real experience. So with limits on freedom, there is room for law.]
Hegel characterises psychology as a practical concern, intended to moderate behaviour and customs. It enumerates mental faculties, finding them like objects in a sack. Differences between individuals, e.g. of interest or intellect, can be observed. We see the general through the individual. [This seems to indicate a preference for biography. The idea of the individual transforming his lived experience in thought may refer back to the "transfigured world" of chapter three. There is a little dualism in the contrast of individual and world that may be developed later on. - SC]
c) Observation of the Relation of Self-consciousness and its Immediate Reality: Physiognomy and Phrenology (309-46)
Observation then has found no law of the relationship of self-consciousness to the reality it faces. Hegel explains that this is because: "The individual is in and for himself; he is for himself, or he is a free action (ein freyes Thun)." (310)
The in-itself that is contrasted with this Hegel calls "having an original determinate being". He reviews the moments present here: there is a universal human form, varied somewhat by climate and people [as in Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws]. Then there are more particular circumstances and situations. Then there are the free actions by which the individual makes himself what he is. Here his outward form or shape (Gestalt) is the expression of his self-realisation, the traits and forms of his activity.
So when we observe the human frame, we can look at the whole individual, both the natural body and that developed by training and habit, the result of inner activity, as well as current disposition. The inner is seen in its effects. Here we consider these in relation. Or rather, we consider how the relation of expression is to be determined. There follows a short sub-section on physiognomy and a longer one on phrenology.
Physiognomy (312-22)
[Hegel draws here on the work of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-99) to develop his view of action as central to the nature of the person. Lichtenberg was the editor of a physics textbook and a popular writer who wrote an essay On Physiognomy: Against the Physiognomists (1778). Kielmeyer was one of his students.
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| Statue of Lichtenberg in Göttingen (photo by Daniel Schwen). |
Some of Lichtenberg's reputation was posthumous and apparently post-dates the Phenomenology. H S Harris points out that observations of local types in the spirit of Lavater were a feature of contemporary travel literature, such as Sophia’s Journey, a novel known to Hegel. Lichtenberg's essay, included in Aufsätze und Streitschriften (Ed. Holzinger, 2013) was a response to an intellectual fad of Hegel's youth. As Hegel does not define the term, we may cite Lichtenberg's definition:
"We take the word Physiognomy in a limited sense and understand by it the skill of discerning the constitution of the mind and heart from the shape and composition of the outer parts of the human body, mainly the face, excluding all temporary signs of emotions; while on the other hand, the whole semiotics of affects, or knowledge of the natural signs of emotions, according to all their degrees and mixtures, should be called Pathognomics." (65)
Lichtenberg says that he began when young to sketch people's faces and this has led him to be skeptical of the claims made for physiognomy. The popularity of physiognomy, he thinks, is not to be attributed to the spirit of observation of the Age, but to the wish to give oneself the greatest possible airs with the least possible actual knowledge. He discusses the physiognomic remarks in Shakespeare's plays, saying that these are few and designed to shed light on the character of the observer. As Shakespeare's King Duncan says: "There's no art/ to find the mind's construction in the face." (Macbeth 1.4). The play was translated into German by Schiller and known to Lichtenberg and Hegel. Lichtenberg concludes, based on sketches of famous individuals and general observation, that there is no correlation between the immoveable parts of the face and character, though habitual expressions may leave traces on the muscles of the face. Hegel's representation of Lichtenberg is a fair summary. Hegel presses Lichtenberg’s aphorisms into the service of his own philosophical project. -SC]
At first, Hegel explains, we encounter an inner in the form of a deed expressed through outward bodily organs - the speaking mouth, the labouring hand, even the walking legs. Physiognomy claims that aspects of the body are related to the deed as signs. Its advocates claim an element of necessity for it that distinguishes it from astrology, or palmistry. However, this is hard to justify. It might be compared to graphology [which was actually used on Hegel's manuscripts in the 1960s]. We act through our speech and our hands, but these are no longer the possession of an individual, but universal in nature when they become comprehensible speech or valuable labour.We express ourselves bodily, e.g. see by his facial expression if someone is serious, and there is a "natural physiognomy" of easy assumptions, but Lichtenberg says that "if the physiognomist did take the measure of a man, he could make himself inscrutable again by a resolve." (para 318) It is conceded that the physiognomist does not see deeds, but only capacities. Lichtenberg comments on this that someone who said "You act like an honest fellow, but I see from your face that you are a knave at heart" would get an honest slap in return. Hegel concludes: "The true being of man is rather his deed. In it, individuality is real, and it is it which removes intention (das Gemeynte) in both its aspects." (322) These incomplete aspects are the motionless body and the inexpressible intention. It is the deed that replaces conjecture with fact. Even a private ill-intention is taken away if we act otherwise. Indeed, we may conjecture and opinionate even about ourselves.
Phrenology (paras 323-46)
Turning to phrenology, Hegel says that what remains to be considered is the immediate, fixed aspect of individuality, of immobile thinghood, in relation to mind. Any relation here, he argues, must be a causal connection. A relation of inner and outer must involve necessity [rather than accident]. If the individual mind then, is to have an effect on the body, it must itself be bodily. What organ this might be is not immediately obvious. Plato thought prophecy the work of the liver, for example. However, the brain and the nervous system are the best candidate. Hegel writes:
"The nerves themselves are no doubt again organs of consciousness which is already engrossed in an outward direction. However, the brain and spinal cord may be considered as the immediate presence of self-consciousness persisting within itself." (327)
The brain is the living head, the skull is a caput mortuum [dead residue, lit. dead head]. We might think of the brain pressing on the skull, or conversely the skull restricting or facilitating the growth of the brain. Either might play the determining role, or we might think of a pre-established harmony like that of Leibniz. A field of conjecture opens up here. The brain might be supposed the organ of settled character and conscious action. This is then compared with the skull. The skull may give rise to many thoughts, as did Yorick's for Hamlet, but it itself has no expression or countenance.
Our list of mental properties changes with the state of psychology and bumps or indentations on the skull are supposed to correspond to them, or to the mind of a murderer, thief, unfaithful wife, or poet. This is on the level of saying that it always rains when you put your washing out, or on the day of the fair. If it perchance does not, still it is "supposed to". Emboldened by the principle that "the outer is expression of the inner" and by comparison with the skulls of animals, observation goes to work. Excuses and subterfuge are used to cover false predictions. [Hegel applies the law of contradiction in its normal sense here.] There is a denial of reason here. Hegel writes:
"What is without mental activity is a thing for consciousness and so little its essence that it is rather its opposite. Consciousness is only real to itself through the negation and consumption of such a being." (339)
Hegel observes that: "The raw instinct of reason will cast aside such a phrenology unexamined." (340)
There follow two images of Israel: the comparison with the grains of sand (334), which is a common Biblical metaphor (e.g. Gen. 22.17 about Abraham’s descendants, or "Isaiah also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved." (Romans 9.27; c.f. Isaiah 10.22)). Hegel returns to the metaphor when he writes:
"As can be said of the Jewish people, that it is precisely because they stand immediately before the gates of Salvation that they are and have been the most rejected [verworfenste], what they should be, this being themselves, they are not to themselves, but displace it beyond them. It makes a higher existence possible for itself through this alienation, if it could but take its object back into itself, than if it remains standing inside the immediacy of being, because the spirit is the greater, the greater the opposition out of which it returns to itself." (340)
A kind of counterpoint emerges here, as we can read Hegel's text either as about ancient or modern Judaism or about phrenology. The passage harks back to the (then) unpublished "theological manuscripts" and may bolster Jean Wahl's argument identifying Judaism as a stage of the unhappy consciousness.
The presence of the mind, Hegel concludes, removes sensuous being and directs us to the idea of purpose. This leads us to turn to self-consciousness. Phrenology on the other hand, leads us from changeable language to a dead thing. It is worthwhile, he remarks, saying what spirit is - and what is intended here is not materialism - but defective to say that it must be something like a bone.
Conclusions (to Observing Reason, i.e. paras 344-46)
344. Hegel gives a positive meaning to his discussion as a whole and a more limited meaning applicable to phrenology itself. On the positive meaning, he writes:
“The unhappy self-consciousness alienated (entäusserte) its self-sufficiency from itself and wrested its being-for-itself out into a thing. It thereby turns from self-consciousness back to consciousness, for which the object is a being (Seyn), a thing, – but this which is a thing, is self-consciousness; so it is the unity of the Self (Ich) and of being, the category.” (344)
So Hegel introduces the idea of a category here, but in an idiosyncratic sense. The thing that is object here is yet self-consciousness. The thing is thus the unity of I and being – it is the category. Consciousness then has reason, but this its object has been determined by the category. This however, is distinct from knowing what reason is.
The category, the immediate unity of being and its own (das Seyns und das Seinen) must take on (durchlauffen) both forms. Observing consciousness is that to which it presents itself in the form of being. Hence consciousness expresses its unconscious certainty in the proposition (den Satz) that “the self is a thing.” Hegel calls this an “infinite judgement”. This judgement refutes itself (sich selbst aufhebt, or it transforms itself). The category thus attains the point of being this self-refuting opposition (Gegensatz). The pure category present as being, or immediately, is thus present only as an object at hand for consciousness. Consciousness too is an unmediated behaviour (Verhalten). The moment of transition to an infinite judgement is from immediacy to mediation, or negativity. Hence the object at hand is determined as a negative, and consciousness rises to self-consciousness against it.
[Notes on terminology: 1. The term “category” comes from Aristotle and Kant. Aristotle abstracts his categories from experience, whereas Kant derives his categories from a table of logical forms. Kant says that the categories are “concepts of an object in general” (B128), or “a priori cognitions... pure concepts of understanding” (A119) whose role is to relate intuitions to pure apperception (B143). Both writers have a plurality of categories rather than one, which is at odds with Hegel’s singular use of the term. Fichte also has a plurality of categories and the term is not prominent in Schelling. 2. The concept of an infinite judgement comes from Kant (Critique of Pure Reason A71-73). It refers to judgements of form “S is non-P”, which combine the positive and negative by presenting the negative in a positive guise by incorporating it in the predicate. Presumably what is meant is judgements such as “the soul is immortal” (Kant’s example), or Fichte’s “I am I (i.e. implicitly non-not-I)”. -SC]
Consciousness no longer seeks to find itself, but to bring itself forth through activity. It is itself the goal of its activity, as formerly in observation it had to do only with things.
345. The second and negative significance is the observation without concepts already considered. Phrenology continues on its way. It scarcely knows what it is saying in the proposition that “spirit is a bone”, as its ideas of both subject and predicate are vague, still more of their relations. Through a kind of natural honesty, it conceals the crudity of its judgement from itself, disguising it by a discourse on cause and effect, organ and sign, and by subtle distinctions that hide the poverty of the basic thought.
346. Brain fibres and the like are only a hypothesis. [In Britain, this was a theory associated with David Hartley.] They are not actually seen and felt. Or when they are seen it is as dead objects. When we descend from concepts to ideation and perception (Vorstellung), something is lost. By insisting on equating self and thinghood, by taking “spirit is a bone” literally, we treat reason in an irrational way, as something irrational. Hegel says:
“Reason, essentially the concept, is immediately divided (entzweyt) into itself and its opposite – an opposition that even by that fact is immediately taken away.”
Much as nature combined the functions of generation and pissing in one organ, so we in our judgement combine the “fulfilment of self-comprehending life” with something less worthy of esteem.
With this positive reference to life, Hegel returns to his main theme and turns to discuss the active capacities of practical reason in the remainder of the chapter.
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