Hegel's Concept of Life Quotes

“Non-derivative and concrete individuals are always self-individuating individuals, and this activity of self-individuation (or self-relating negativity) is manifest immediately in the activity of form of living beings. Indeed, this is why Hegel begins the chapter on 'Life' with a discussion of 'the living individual.' Individuality is immediately manifest in the living being, or the living being immediately posits itself as an individual, dividing itself from what it is not, because it matters to the living being that it is itself and not something else: first, that it is itself and not a piece of inert, dead matter; second, that is it itself and not substitutable for another member of the same species; third, that it is itself and not a member of another species. Only beings that can be for themselves can point things out for them as an individual this, and so for Hegel, anything that is individual only on account of being pointed out by something outside itself is not an individual in the strict sense. Rocks, clouds, lumps of coal, and drops of water are thus mere particulars rather than individuals. In the context of the ontological proof, then, the being that is identical with the Concept is its own activity, and this activity posits itself as self-determining individuality.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“In short, for theoretical cognition, all truth is to be found in the external world, and for practical cognition, no truth is to be found in the external world. This stance of the will, in which the ends of the good reside within the will alone, and external actuality is, in-itself, empty of all worth of the good will, leaving 'two worlds in opposition'. What the unity of theoretical and practical standpoints allows is a reciprocity and mutual tempering of each such that cognition can be brought in relation to the external world while avoiding the extreme vices of both stances: theoretical cognition's meta-awareness of its own activity as practical prevents the self-conception in which all content of truth is found in the givenness of the object; practical cognition's reunification with theoretical cognition prevents the self-conception in which the will alone is the source of all goodness and worth. Theoretical cognition reminds the will that the contingency of the world can be made to conform with cognition's form of activity, that although it is true that there are ineliminable contingencies, this truth is something that cognition can grasp, and most importantly, it is not a fact that disables the activity of cognition in principle. Since theoretical cognition can find truth of self-certainty in the given contingency of the world - most notably, the instinct of reason finds itself in the form of inner purposiveness as such - nothing in principle prevents the will from finding the truth of self-certainty amid practical contingency, except for its faulty conception of itself. Far from a worthless nullity, the actuality confronting the will is already permeated by rational ends, 'an objective world whose inner ground and actual subsistence is the Concept'. That is, the external actuality confronting the will is always already a world shaped by the rationally realized ends of the will itself - ultimately, the world of objective spirit, and more directly, the world of ethical life. The insistence of the will that the good is a mere ought that cannot be realized is thus a misconception of both itself and its world - a misconception that theoretical cognition can help to correct. The unity of theoretical and practical cognition brings forth the absolute Idea, which, once more, returns us to the problem of life.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“The logical form of life thus opens up the theoretical and practical activities of cognition, or more directly, the logical form of life opens up the space of reasons. Both theoretical and practical cognition take the general form of the judgment of life, beginning as a subjective drive that distinguishes itself from and relates itself to a presupposed objectivity, and in that process, realizes subjective purposes by permeating objectivity with its own rational form. In the case of theoretical cognition, the subjective drive for truth is confronted by the givenness of its presupposed world, and by means of its powers judgment and inference, it renders the world conformable by conceptual comprehension, aided by definitions, divisions, and theorems. In the case of practical cognition, the subjective drive to realize the good is achieved by transforming the external world according to its freely willed action, shaping the world in a way that further the aims of a self-determined, rational life.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“Although much of the Differenzschrift takes up Schelling's ideas from the same period, we can now see that Hegel unequivocally and consistently endorses the fundamental insight of that text with respect to the absolute, essential relation between self-consciousness and life. In the context of the Science of Logic, the speculative identity of subjective and objective subject-objects is reproduced at a variety of levels and finds its ultimate result and foundation in the Idea. First, the Logic as a whole is divided into the Objective Logic and Subjective Logic; second, the Subjective Logic itself contains sections on subjectivity and objectivity, the activities of which are determined largely in relation to the unity and power of the genus; third, the unity and relation of subjective and objective in the Subjective Logic is grounded in the Idea, which is itself divided into the Idea as life (the objective subject-object) and the Idea as self-conscious cognition (the subjective subject-object). In developing this notion of the subject-object at multiple, overlapping levels, and concluding the Logic with a presentation of the dialectic between life and cognition, the Idea completes an argument that Hegel began in outline in the Differenzschrift, thereby providing his system with an absolute, scientific method.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“The striving of the subjective Concept to posit itself externally, which Hegel now calls the subjective purpose, signals the shift from considering the forms of judgment to considering the objectivity of judgment, an objectivity that can be posited and determined only in relation to a judging subject, Judgment is objective, then, on account of two factors: first, judgment is objective in relation to the self-constituting activity of a judging subject who realizes itself by means of an objective universal or essential Gattung-predicate, where the power of that predicate is reflected in the subject's relation-to-self; second, judgment is objective on account of the relationship between a judging subject and an external objectivity that it determines 'absolutely' - that is, an external objectivity that it determines according to its own internally purposive activity and form. These two features of objective judgment, and the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity that they represent, are the main topics of discussion in the final section of the Logic on the 'Idea.' The identification of internal purposiveness with the standard of truth and the form of objective judgment is thus the culmination of Hegel's argument that purposiveness serves a positive function for philosophy in contrast to the negative function of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“The ability of an object to constitute itself as a subject is thus defined, in the first instance, by the objective context provided by the genus; that is, the capacity or incapacity of an object to constitute itself as an individual subject depends first and foremost on the kind of thing the object is. For mechanical, chemical, and externally purposive objects, the power of the genus is determined essentially as violence insofar as these objects cannot constitute themselves as subjects through a predicate due to their very nature as defined by their genus. For example, a rock, qua rock, can be determined through a predicate externally - by means of external impact from other objects and forces (it can be crushed or cracked into pieces) or by means of human definition and conceptualization (this rock is igneous and that one is sedimentary) - but is cannot determine itself through a predicate and constitute itself as a subject by means of its own activity. The power of the objet to constitute itself as a subject is necessarily defined in relation to its essential Gattung-predicate, a predicate that manifests the power of violence insofar as the object is unable to constitute itself as a subject by means of this very same predicate.
The third characteristic, finally, is that power as violence directs itself against individuality. In specifying that it is only in the presence of the freedom of self-consciousness that the power of the genus can be determined as fate, Hegel writes the following: 'Only self-consciousness has fate in the strict sense, because it is free, and therefore in the individuality of its 'I' it absolutely exists in and for itself and can oppose itself to its objective universality and alienate itself from it'. Individuality is thus defined as an existence in and for itself that can stand opposed to and be in contradiction with its objective universality or genus, while continuing to manifest the genus's power as identical with its own self-relation. Without the ability to oppose its genus, the ability to be self-alienated with respect to its genus, the object is not, strictly speaking, an individual (it remains a mere particular, a token of its type entirely interchangeable with other tokens of the same type). Individuality is therefore not only the power of the object to constitute itself as a subject through its predicate, but moreover, this power of self-constitution is essentially also the power to oppose, contradict, and transform the genus by means of the genus's own power as manifest in the determinateness of an individual.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“Hegels goal in the 'Objectivity' section is to show that the objective universality of the genus is not simply the necessary context of predication but also the necessary context of something's existence and reality, an objective context that determines the degree to which self-determining activity can be realized. In the present chapter, I will argue that mechanical, chemical, and teleological processes all manifest varying degrees of acitivty, but it is only when Hegel arrives at the determination of internal purposiveness in the chapter on 'Teleology' that self-determining activity is fully realized. Whereas the treatment of the subjective Concept was primarily focused on the forms and operations of thought, the treatment of objectivity concerns the objective reality and existence of the Concept, and the degree to which that objective reality can be understood as part of processes of self-determination.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic

“We can recall that earlier, Hegel claimed that the particularization, individuation, and determinateness of the Concept is a movement and reference outward, which suggests that the judgment of the Concept must have the same outward reference. The notion of outward reference suggests that the subjective Concept strives to correspond with reality and approximates it, but ultimately remains inadequate and unequal to reality until we reach what Hegel calls the Idea. What does it mean, then, that life is the immediate Idea, the immediate unity and division of Concept and reality? Roughly, I think it means the following: life qua Idea not only is the ground of the correspondence between subject and predicate in judgment but must also be the ground of a schema of reality, allowing reality to take shape for and appear to the judging subject in a way that corresponds with its powers of judgment. That is, in order for reality to potentially correspond or not correspond to judgments of the Concept, reality must appear immediately to the judging subject in a particular way. This reality is not the immediacy of sheer being, not is it the immediacy of intuition in the form of space and time; rather, it is the immediate schema of the form of life, a form that Hegel outlines in the chapter on 'Life' according to three poles: corporeality, externality, and process of the species. Reality for Hegel is this not the immediacy of sheer being or bare givenness but, rather, always appears as shaped by the specific constitution of one's life-form, and all life-forms immediately experience reality according to the specific constitution of these three poles.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic