The Skeptical Origin of the Divided Consciousness

The collection Between Kant and Hegel (1985) contains Hegel's essay on skepticism in English translation.

This post summaries some background reading on the problem of the origin of the unchangeable wing of the unhappy or divided consciousness out of skepticism in Chapter Four of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

The Skeptical Origin of the Divided Consciousness 

The skeptical consciousness is said in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit to give rise to the unhappy or divided (entzweitete) consciousness (paras 205-08). This transition is not simply a reflection of historical fact, nor presented as such. Skepticism can erode faith historically, but also give way to it. In British philosophy, for example, the skeptic David Hume follows John Locke, but is succeeded by the common sense philosopher Thomas Reid. It is the same in personal biography, where crises of faith can be lasting, or resolved with the passage of time.

This leaves the logic of the emergence of "the unchangeable" (das Unwandelbar) out of skepticism at the outset of the unhappy consciousness difficult to interpret. It can be understood subjectively, but the terminology also seems to reflect metaphysical commitments. There are several lines of inquiry I’d like to pursue to interpret this transition. These include:

• The Berlin Phenomenology 
• Hegel’s Essay on Skepticism 
• Jacobi’s book on Hume 
• Labarrière and Jarzyk’s commentary 
• Michael Forster and Bertrand Quentin’s books on Hegel and Skepticism 
• Essays by Claus Düsing and Klaus Vieweg 

I don’t expect these all to be fruitful for my purposes, but negative answers are still progress of a sort. I have already written on Jacobi. Here I discuss the Berlin Phenomenology and the essay on Skepticism.

The Berlin Phenomenology

Hegel gave five sets of lectures on subjective spirit (including self-consciousness) in Berlin between 1820 and 1829 on the basis of the Encyclopedia, of which there were three published editions (1817, 1827, 1830). However, the structure of this treatment is different from that in the Phenomenology. In Berlin, we proceed directly from the economic (in a broad sense) concepts of desire and work, master and servant to their institutional embodiment in the structures of the family, civil society and the state. There is no historical diversion through Graeco-Roman philosophy and the unhappy consciousness, as in the Phenomenology (Chapter 4b). Instead, similar material is displaced into discussions of education or given in popular lectures on history.

The reason seems to be that the Berlin lectures are a systematic presentation of the content of philosophy, rather than the historical presentation of the emergence of the systematic viewpoint in the Phenomenology.

There are English versions of the Berlin material in the translations and commentaries of Wallace/Miller (Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind) and Petry (Subjective Spirit, Berlin Phenomenology).

Hegel’s Essay on Skepticism

This essay "On the Relation of Skepticism to Philosophy" first appeared in the Critical Journal of Philosophy (1801-03) and there is an English translation in Between Kant and Hegel (Eds. Giovanni & Harris. Hacker, 1985). It elaborates several arguments about the project of a thoroughgoing critique of knowledge claims.

Here I wish to focus solely on matters that affect the interpretation of the skeptical origins of the unchangeable in the Phenomenology. The main argument of Hegel's essay is an engagement with Gottlob Schulze, the author of Aenesidemus (1794) and Critique of Theoretical Philosophy (2 vols, 1801).

Hegel points out that Schulze confines the field of doubt to theoretical reason. Unlike the ancient skeptics, Schulze excludes the facts of consciousness, analytic statements, and physics which “sets all doubt all defiance” from the scope of skeptical doubt. However, in the range of “theoretical philosophy”, he contrasts dogmatism and skepticism and takes the part of the latter. Hegel comments:

“Without the determination of the true relationship of skepticism to philosophy, and without the insight that skepticism itself in its inmost heart is at one with every true philosophy, and hence that there is a philosophy which is neither skepticism nor dogmatism, and is thus both at once, without this, all the histories, and reports, and new editions of skepticism lead to a dead end.” (322-23)

In the sense that it incorporates the content of skeptical arguments, Hegel identifies Plato’s Parmenides as a skeptical work of philosophy. Skepticism, he says:

“is itself the negative side of the cognition of the absolute, and directly presupposes reason as the positive side. [...] This skepticism that comes on the scene in its pure explicit shape in the Parmenides can, however, be found implicit in every genuine philosophical system.” (323-24) 

Hegel illustrates the concept of reason that this implies by reference to Spinoza’s definition of a cause of itself. He observes that the German term Zweifel (doubt) is an inadequate translation for the skeptical epoche (suspension of judgement).

Hegel then offers a rewriting of the history of skepticism in line with this classification, adverting to Carl Friedrich Stäudlin’s History of Skepticism (2 vols, 1794). The ancient Greek Pyrrho was the founder of skepticism. His “singular personality became increasingly blurred by time, and the philosophical interest emerged in its purity.” This was found in the “10 tropes” (turnings) of early skepticism, which were directed against knowledge from the senses. It appears to be this that is referred to in the Preface to the Phenomenology when Hegel says:

“The skepticism that is directed against the whole range of phenomenal consciousness, on the other hand, renders the spirit for the first time competent to examine what truth is.” (para 78)

Only in skepticism's later development did a further five tropes appear (and then a further two) directed against reason itself. Hegel gives an account of these five anti-rational tropes, along with his answers to them. To the first, diversity of opinions among philosophers, he points out that disagreement presupposes a minimal prior level of agreement and that one can thus search out identity behind apparent conflicts. In other words, there is only disagreement if we disagree about something. As for the other four anti-rational tropes, reason is entirely at home with their considerations of infinite regress, relationship, assumption and circular argument – and not disabled by them. This appears for example in the paradox that statements of universal skeptical doubt are included in their own scope.

Hegel extends his argument by questioning the separation of thought and being that he sees as an assumption of modern skepticism. He observes of the anti-rational skeptic:

“This sundering of the rational, in which thinking and being are one, and the absolute insistence on this opposition, in other words the intellect made absolute, constitutes the endlessly repeated and universally applied ground of this dogmatic skepticism.” (339)

This is a version of Thomas Reid’s critique of the skeptical assumptions of Hume and the “way of ideas” in Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764). This British debate was familiar in Germany through the translations of Garve.

The significance of this for interpretation of the skeptical self-consciousness in the Phenomenology is we ought not to assume that the “unchangeable” counterpart to the wavering skeptic is a finite modern dogmatism that might be aligned with an earthly authority. The dogmatism and skepticism addressed by Schulze agree that “the truth resides in temporality.” (330) Instead, Hegel’s idea of the skeptic ought to evoke in us the idea of reason, which in Hegel’s reading of Spinoza and others, is akin to the idea of God. Ancient skepticism is his primary subject-matter.

I omit consideration of Hegel’s discussion of Schulze’s analysis of Locke, Leibniz and Kant, as the key point relates to the discussion of ancient skepticism. It is worth noting that Hegel cites Jacobi’s remark on modern skepticism, that “we get sick of it, once all the moves and turns are known.” (Werke III, 29-30).

The social context of the Phenomenology makes me think that Stäudlin's work, though barely mentioned in Hegel's essay, may be more significant as background to Hegel's concept of skepticism and divided consciousness than his published criticisms of Schulze's then recently published work. Stäudlin (1761-1826) was known personally to Hegel through family connections. They had both been students at Tübingen. Stäudlin was widely travelled and in addition to his early History and Spirit of Skepticism, wrote widely on theology and other subjects.