Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

by Peter Singer

Knowledge is only possible because our mind plays an active role, organizing and systematizing what we experience. We know the world within a framework of space, time, and substance; but space, time, and substance are not objective realities that exist ‘out there’, independently of us. They are creations of our intuition or reason without which we could not comprehend the world.

What, then, one might naturally ask, is the world really like, independently of the framework within which we grasp it? This question, Kant says, can never be answered. Independent reality – Kant called it the world of the ‘thing-in-itself’ – is for ever beyond our knowledge.

Orthodox religion is, in Hegel’s eyes, a barrier to the goal of restoring man to a state of harmony, for it makes man subordinate his own powers of thought to an external authority.

Reason lifts free people above the chance events of the natural world, and enables them to reflect critically upon their situation and the forces that influence them. Hence freedom cannot be fully achieved without critical thought and reflection. Critical thought and reflection, then, is the key to further progress in the development of freedom.

In the face of the demands of the state for outward conformity, freedom can only be found by retreating into oneself, by taking refuge in a philosophy such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, or Scepticism. The details of these opposing philosophical schools need not concern us here; what is important is their common tendency to pooh-pooh everything that the real world has to offer – riches, political power, worldly glory – and to substitute an ideal of living which makes the adherent absolutely indifferent to anything the outside world can do.

Never since the sun has stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around it had it been perceived that man’s existence centres in his head, i.e. in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality … not until now had man advanced to the recognition of the principle that thought ought to govern spiritual reality. This was accordingly a glorious mental dawn. All thinking beings shared in the jubilation of this epoch.

What the English call ‘comfort’ is something inexhaustible and illimitable. Others can reveal to you that what you take to be comfort at any stage is discomfort, and these discoveries never come to an end. Hence the need for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation.

Hegel, from "Philosophy of Right"

Since we did not choose our desires, we are not free when we act from desire. This argument is reminiscent of Kant rather than Hegel, but Hegel goes along with it up to a point. Let us follow it a little further. If we are not free when we act from desire, it seems that the only possible path to freedom is to purge oneself of all desires. But what would then be left? Kant’s answer is: reason. Motivation to action can come from desires, or from reason. Do away with the desires, and we are left with pure practical reason.

Similar to Buddhist philosophy, but not identical. Buddhism does not place a similar emphasis on reason. Also, the either/or choice between desire and reason is a false dichotomy. I can desire certain things based on the application of reason, for example.

A customary morality, which demands conformity to its rules simply because it is the custom to conform to them, cannot command the obedience of free-thinking beings.

Hegel would have thought that popular suffrage would amount to people voting in accordance with their material interests or with the capricious and even whimsical likes and dislikes they may form for one candidate rather than another. Had he been able to witness an election in a modern democracy, he would not have had to change his mind.

In our attempts to gain knowledge we are attempting to grasp reality. Hence knowledge, Hegel says, is often likened to an instrument by which we grasp truth; if our instrument is faulty we may end up holding nothing but error.

To learn to swim we must plunge boldly into the stream; and to obtain knowledge of reality, we must plunge boldly into the stream of consciousness that is the starting point of all we know.

Why should we assume that all knowledge can be put into words? Mystics have often asserted that the truths of mystical experiences are impossible to put into words, and yet are the deepest truths of all. ‘A truth cannot lose anything by being written down’, Hegel said; but perhaps this simple claim was the first step down the path away from truth. Should we not have stopped Hegel right there, and insisted on the validity of knowledge too pure for words?

Opinion is not knowledge. It can only become knowledge by being brought out into the open.

Each person, then, needs the other to establish his own awareness of himself. What precisely is it that each requires from the other? Hegel suggests that it is acknowledgement or recognition. To understand his point we need to note that the German word for self-consciousness, ‘Selbstbewusstsein’, also has the sense of ‘being self-assured’ (unlike the English word, which is associated with embarrassment and hesitation).

The Stoic in chains is still free because chains do not matter to him. He detaches himself from his body and finds his consolation in his mind, where no tyrant can touch him. The weakness of Stoicism is that thought, cut off from the real world, lacks all determinate content.

Freedom for Hegel is not freedom to do as we please; it consists in having a free mind.

If reason is the essential medium of mind, it follows that mind is inherently universal.

All that needs to be said is that for human beings to be free, they must be fully aware of the rational and hence universal nature of their intellect.

‘Man, know thyself.’ In this dictum is not intended a self-recognition that regards the specialities of one’s own weaknesses and defects: it is not the individual that is admonished to become acquainted with his idiosyncrasy, but humanity in general is summoned to self-knowledge.

From Hegel's Philosophy of History

Reality is constituted by mind. At first mind does not realize this. It sees reality as something independent of it, even as something hostile or alien to it. During this period mind is estranged or alienated from its own creation. It tries to obtain knowledge of reality, but this knowledge is not genuine knowledge because mind does not recognize reality for what it is, and so regards it as a mysterious thing beyond its grasp. Only when mind awakens to the fact that reality is its own creation can it give up this reaching after the ‘beyond’. Then it understands that there is nothing beyond itself. Then it knows reality as directly and immediately as it knows itself. It is at one with it. As Hegel puts it in the concluding section of the Phenomenology, absolute knowledge is ‘mind knowing itself in the shape of mind’.

In the Logic this same method is applied to the abstract categories in which we think. Hegel starts with the most indeterminate, contentless concept of all: being, or bare existence. Pure being, he says, is pure indeterminateness and vacuity. Pure being has in it no object for thought to grasp. It is entirely empty. In fact, it is nothing. From this breathtaking beginning the dialectic of the Logic moves forward. The first thesis, being, has turned into its antithesis, nothing. Being and nothing are both opposites and the same; their truth, therefore, is this movement into and apart from each other – in other words, it is becoming.

Pure consciousness