Translating Hegel

The Phenomenology of Spirit and Modern Philosophy

Edited by
Brian Manning Delaney
Sven-Olov Wallenstein
Södertörn Philosophical Studies

Södertörn Philosophical Studies is a book series published under

the direction of the Department of Philosophy at Södertörn
University. The series consists of monographs and anthologies
in philosophy, with a special focus on the Continental-
European tradition. It seeks to provide a platform for innovative
contemporary philosophical research. The volumes are
published mainly in English and Swedish. The series is edited
by Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Hans Ruin.

Cover artwork: The Stations of the Cross, eleventh Station (Je-

sus is nailed to the Cross)

In my interpretation of the Stations of the Cross, the format

is A4, a standardized format. During the course of the
preparation, the image was gradually erased until only the
underlying and supporting structure could be imagined
through the layers of chalk, pigments, and adhesive. The
image was transformed from image to absence of an
image, returned from being subject to object. A container,
emptied of its content, a surface for the projection of an
idea. The story was deprived of its linear chronological
structure and instead approached a ritual narrativity. A
narrating in action, time, and space.

Rickard Sollman, 2007

Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
 TRANSLATING HEGEL
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY

SÖDERTÖRN
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
2012
Translating Hegel
Edited by
Brian Manning Delaney
& Sven-Olov Wallenstein

SÖDERTÖRN
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
13
 Södertörn University
The Library
SE-141 89 Huddinge

www.sh.se/publications

© The authors
Graphic Form: Jonathan Robson & Per Lindblom
Printed by E-print, Stockholm 2012

Södertörn Philosophical Studies 13

ISSN 1651-6834

Södertörn Academic Studies 53

ISSN 1650-433X

ISBN 978-91-86069-56-8
 Contents

Introduction 5

On Hegel’s Claim that Self-Consciousness is “Desire Itself”

(Begierde überhaupt)
ROBERT B. PIPPIN 31

The Self-Consciousness of Consciousness

WALTER JAESCHKE 55

Absolute Knowledge
TERRY PINKARD 71

From Finite Thinking to Infinite Spirit

SUSANNA LINDBERG 87

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN 103

Hegel’s Anomalous Functionalism

STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE 121

Hegel and Exposure

VICTORIA FARELD 131

The Place of Art in Hegel’s Phenomenology

SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN 147

Understanding as Translation
PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER 163

Hegel in Swedish
BRIAN MANNING DELANEY 191

French Losses in Translating Hegel

JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE 213
Authors 223
 Introduction

The enigma of Hegel

In 1807, one of the most ambitious, dense, and enigmatic works in the
history of philosophy was published: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
Neither a commercial nor an academic success in its own time, the book has
remained with us to this day, albeit more often cited and alluded to than
actually read. It is one of those works that always seem to be waiting for an
adequate deciphering, that we never really have begun to read, and whose
position in history remains undecided.
Thus while Hegel’s Phenomenology and indeed all his later works in one
sense lie behind us, like gigantic and enigmatic pyramids, as Nietzsche once
noted, in another sense Hegel’s Phenomenology points to a task still before
us: to grasp the mature works as the origin of a philosophical modernity
that fuses concept and history into the movement of thought itself, where
one of the first decisive steps was taken to create an expanded concept of
reason that would be able to include its own temporal becoming, its own
opacities and ruptures, its own development.
In various degrees of proximity to Hegel’s own philosophical vision and
language, many subsequent philosophers within the Continental tradition,
from Husserl and Heidegger to Adorno and Derrida, have grappled with
the historicity of thinking, and in this they continue his legacy—often,
paradoxically enough, in seeking to free us from a certain Hegelian shadow,
from the theodicy or Parousia of history bequeathed to us by the idea of
absolute knowing.1 To some extent they all aspire in different ways to end
with the Hegelian ending of metaphysics, to rethink, as it were, the
completion of philosophy in light of what remained unthought or repressed

1
Indeed, the Continental tradition itself can be defined by the persistence of specifically
Hegelian themes, whereas the analytical tradition, at least up until a few decades ago,
often omits Hegel entirely. Both of these traditions of course acknowledge the
importance of Kant (although in very different ways), whereas Hegel, and specifically,
his insistence on the historicity and situatedness of philosophical thinking, is where they
part, at least when these two traditions narrate their respective histories.

5
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

within it. Adorno’s question whether metaphysics is still possible,2 which in

principle asks about the fate of philosophy after the Hegelian con-
summation and the catastrophic failure to realize its promise, finds an echo
in Derrida’s inquiry into what the “remains” of Hegel mean for us today,3
both of which can be taken as responses—of course quite different from, yet
not entirely unrelated to—Heidegger’s claim that we need to take a “step
back” from the Hegelian determination of philosophy as absolute know-
ledge.4 And yet, such overcoming and unhinging of the Hegelian circle may

2
“Its [philosophy’s] critical self-reflection may not stop however before the highest
achievements of its history. It needs to be asked if and whether, following the collapse of
the Hegelian one, it would even be possible anymore, just as Kant investigated the
possibility of metaphysics after the critique of rationalism. If the Hegelian doctrine of the
dialectic represented the impossible goal of showing, with philosophical concepts, that it
was equal to the task of what was ultimately heterogeneous to such, an account is long
overdue of its relationship to dialectics, and why precisely his attempt failed.” Negative
Dialektik, Gesammelte Schriften 6 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 16. Trans.
Dennis Redmond, available online at: http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/ndtrans.html.
Adorno’s entire project for a negative dialectics can be understood as an attempt to play
Hegelian and Kantian motifs against each other.
3
“What, after all, of the remain(s) [quoi du reste] today, for us, here, now, of a Hegel.”
Derrida, Glas, trans. John P. Leavey and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1986), 1. If Hegel, as Derrida suggests elsewhere, is the “last philosopher of the
book and the first thinker of writing” (Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997], 26), this indicates the crucial
position he holds within the historical schemata that underlie deconstruction, at least in
its early phases, and in this Derrida comes close to Adorno. On Derrida’s relation to
Hegel, see Stuart Barnett (ed.), Hegel after Derrida (London: Routledge, 1998).
4
In Identität und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), 36ff, Heidegger suggests that his
relation to Hegel involves three components. 1) The matter of thinking, which for Hegel
is the absolute concept, and which for Heidegger is the ontological difference. 2) The
guiding principle of the dialog with the history of philosophy, which for Hegel is to enter
into what has been effectively thought, in order to attain a synthetic presentation, and
which for Heidegger is to approach the unthought, not in the sense of an absence, but as
something that provides space for that which has been thought. 3) The character of the
dialog, which for Hegel is to surpass the relative one-sidedness of earlier philosophies by
including them in an infinite discourse able to express them all, and which for Heidegger
is the step back, which makes the finitude of the tradition visible. Heidegger’s relation to
Hegel is however far from univocal, and if one were to piece together his first references
to Hegel—when he, in the habilitation thesis on Duns Scotus, speaks of the need to
overcome the difference between history and systematic philosophy—and the later
remarks—those in Being and Time, the 1929 lecture course on German Idealism and the
current state of philosophy (GA 28), the 1930/31 lecture course (GA 32) entirely
dedicated to the Phenomenology (which however breaks off at the beginning of the
chapter on self-consciousness), the notes on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from 1933 (GA
86), and the published and more well-known essays after the war (“Hegels Begriff der
Erfahrung,” in Holzwege, GA 5, and “Hegel und die Griechen” in Wegmarken, GA 9)—

6
 INTRODUCTION

perhaps further entrench us in its grip. As Foucault famously notes at the

end of his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in 1970, L’ordre du
discours, all the anti-Hegelianisms of our time may be nothing but another
ruse of history, a kind of detour at the end of which he is still waiting for us,
immobile, as the great spider of history that will eventually lure us into his
all-encompassing web.5
On another note, equally suspicious of the metaphysical and theological
dimension of the absolute, but with the view to replacing it with an idea of
an embedded and situated concept of reason, some contemporary Anglo-
Saxon philosophers, notably Robert Brandom6 and John McDowell,7 have
reintroduced Hegel in a way that draws him close to pragmatism and to
“holistic” theories of meaning, i.e. theories holding that concepts only mean
something as part of conceptual networks, but that also contain a
commitment to scientific naturalism that may seem surprising for other
readers of Hegel. In this interpretation, the problem is not understanding
the way in which Hegel’s “absolute” consummates classical metaphysics
and/or theology, or the extent to which our present moment’s seemingly
anti-Hegelian claims remain caught up in his system, but how we should
understand the situatedness of our conceptual schemes. The “absolute”
quality of a conceptual whole would in this sense amount to the absence of
an unmediated outside that would serve as an independent reference (thus
echoing Sellars’s “myth of the given,” which is a frequent reference in these
readings), and it would not preclude the possibility of there being a plurality

the resulting picture would be highly complex and shifting. For more on Heidegger’s
relation to Hegel, see Susanna Lindberg’s contribution below.
5
Foucault, L’ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 74f. A perception of a general-
ized anti-Hegelianism similar to Foucault’s is put forth for instance in the preface to
Deleuze’s 1969 thesis Différence et répétition, which speaks of a “generalized anti-
Hegelianism,” where “difference and repetition have taken the place of the identical and
the negative, of identity and contradiction.” Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton
(London: Athlone Press, 1994), xix.
6
See Brandom, Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press
and Harvard University Press, 2009). For a discussion of this somewhat unexpected
return of Hegel, see Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian
Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). These new frontiers have
already generated a considerable discussion; see, for instance, Christoph Halbig, Michael
Quante, and Ludwig Siep (eds.), Hegels Erbe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), and
vol. 3 (2005) of Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus, eds. Karl Ameriks &
Jürgen Stolzenberg.
7
See, for instance, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994),
and Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2009).

7
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

of such absolutes, and would not understand it as a historical termination.

(The status of Hegel’s absolute is a dealt with in detail in Terry Pinkard’s
and Susanna Lindberg’s contributions, below.)
Others have similarly stressed the social nature of meaning in Hegel,
while also foregrounding the motif of conflict and power inherent in
intersubjectivity as a structure of “recognition,”8 which still remains largely
tangential in the analytical reading. In the various theories of recognition
the stress tends to lie on the social dynamic, and on the open-ended nature
of recognition, rather than on conceptual wholes, and the emphasis is more
ethical and political than epistemological, although all such theories in the
end can be said to question, each in their respective ways, this division. (As
both Robert Pippin and Carl-Göran Heidegren point out in their contribu-
tions below, the main challenge is to do justice to the transcendental claims
while still acknowledging the social sphere.)
In order to overcome, displace, or fundamentally modify the claims to
absolute knowledge that Hegel of course makes, one obviously first must
grasp what they mean, which is by no means obvious; in fact, the ultimate
intent of the Phenomenology has remained mysterious. The great Hegel
scholar Otto Pöggeler remarks, in his Hegels Idee einer Phänomenologie des
Geistes,9 that his study was presented in order to save Hegel’s book from a
certain intentionally malevolent use to which it was put by German
philosophy departments. If there was an aspiring Ph.D. candidate that the
department was reluctant to accept, he would be told: yes, you will be
admitted to the program, we just want to you to write a brief essay where
you summarize the basic arguments of the Phenomenology. While perhaps
apocryphal, the anecdote contains a truth with which most readers of the
Phenomenology will be familiar: the labyrinthine quality of the prose, the
architectonic complexities of the Hegelian phrase that not only relate to the
syntactic structures but also to the very movement and content of his
thought, appear to render any attempt at a straightforward summary futile.

8
See most recently Axel Honneth Wellmer, Kampf um Anerkennung: Zur moralischen
Grammatik sozialer Konflikte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992). The theme was
first addressed by Jürgen Habermas in his work on the Jena manuscripts (see “Arbeit
und Interaktion: Bemerkungen zu Hegels Jenenser ‘Philosophie des Geistes,’” in Haber-
mas, Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968]), and
has since then been explored by many scholars. This theme is developed further in
Victoria Fareld’s contribution below, where she argues that the idea of recognition
presupposes an underlying recognizability.
9
Pöggeler, Hegels Idee einer Phänomenologie des Geistes (Freiburg: Alber, 1973).

8
 INTRODUCTION

And yet the Phenomenology aims to produce precisely such a synoptic

overview, to trace the development of sprit from its simplest form to its
completion, and to do so in a way that is not merely empirical, but will
provide us with a rational story of how consciousness step by step casts off
its quality of being a mere love of wisdom, a philosophia, and becomes
identical to wisdom, a science (Wissenschaft).
Maybe there is, as Adorno suggests in the third and final of his Drei
Studien zu Hegel, “Skoteinos, or How to Read,” an essential obscurity in
Hegel that should not simply be effaced. Linking together Hegel and the
great thinker of difference and identity at the other end of the history of
philosophy, Heraclitus—who for Hegel too was an essential reference10—
Adorno perceives this obscurity as an objective problem pertaining to the
matter of Hegel’s thought itself. For Hegel, in opposition to the Cartesian
clarity of principles, the totality is present in each part and yet goes beyond
it, in such a way that “[e]very single sentence in Hegel’s philosophy proves
itself unsuitable for that philosophy, and the form expresses this in its
inability to grasp any content with complete adequacy.”11 As we follow the
movement of the constituent parts (the reference here is the Logic, where
the problem is further aggravated, although it surely exists in the
Phenomenology too), we must always be aware of the system, although it
does not form an abstract higher-order concept, but only exists as this
immanent movement: “At every moment one needs to keep seemingly
incompatible maxims in mind,” Adorno notes, “painstaking immersion in
detail, and free detachment.”12

10
See the section on Heraclitus in Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der
Philosophie, Werke, eds. Eva Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1986), vol. 18, 319ff, where Hegel claims that “we here can seen land,” and
“there is no sentence of Heraclitus that I have not taken into my Logic” (320). That
Heraclitus was “obscure” (skoteinos), may, Hegel suggests, have something to do with
the quality of his language, as Aristotle also had claimed. But the obscurity of Heraclitus
is fundamentally a result of the fact that “profound speculative thought is expressed in
this philosophy” (322).
11
Adorno, Three Studies on Hegel, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT, 1993), 91.
12
Ibid., 95.

9
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

Towards the system

But how then should we approach this forbidding book? Like all great
works, it is marked by its origin, while not being reducible to it: philosophy
is not just of its time, Hegel famously notes in the introduction to his
Philosophy of Right, but is “its own time comprehended in thoughts” (ihrer
Zeit in Gedanken gefasst).13 The Phenomenology is located at a crucial
juncture in post-Kantian thought, and attempts to continue the movement
going beyond the limits set for reason in Kant’s critical philosophy, while
also respecting and developing the idea of critical reflection on knowledge.14
But one must also acknowledge the mark of dramatic and momentous shifts
in political and social history, leading from the French Revolution and the
Terror, of which Hegel provides an incisive analysis in the dialectic of
“absolute freedom,” to the Napoleonic wars, all of which had a profound
impact on German intellectual and political life. And beyond these
disruptive events we must also speak of the gradual emergence of the
modern state apparatus, with its new bureaucracies and institutions,
techniques of power and mechanisms of individualization and subject-
ification, together with the discourse of political economy as the mode of a
new “governmentality,” to use the vocabulary of Foucault.15 From his first
texts onwards, Hegel reacts to these transformations, and a reflection on the
nature of political modernity, as a quest for the unity of individual subjects
and collective orders, traverses all of his works, although it was initially
couched in theological language: the individual must be recognized and
respected, while still being understood in terms of an overarching order or
“spirit” that makes this individuality possible. Fifteen year after the
Phenomenology, the Philosophy of Right would attempt to solve these
problems, but we can already see them germinating in the texts from the
Jena period, where Hegel develops a reflection on labor, language, and
interaction that can be understood both as a way to conceptualize or

13
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 21.
14
That Hegel’s arguments can be reconstructed as a critical extension of Kant’s
transcendental idealism that takes it into the direction of intersubjectivity, is particularly
emphasized by Robert Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness
(Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1989). See also Pippin, Idealism as Modernism:
Hegelian Variations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
15
See for instance Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de
France, 1977–1978, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

10
 INTRODUCTION

comprehend an emerging social reality as well as a response to the political

philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
On the one hand, it is true that the emphasis on subjectivity situates
Hegel within the development of the universal science that was proposed by
Descartes as the way for the subject to achieve mastery over the world: it is
by carrying out the operations of the mathesis universalis that we can at
least approach the infinite knowledge of God, and for rationalist philosophy
the new mathematical science is the essential tool for achieving this. When
we reach Descartes, Hegel says in his lectures on the history of philosophy,
we are like sailors who have spent a long time adrift on the open sea, and
suddenly can cry out “Land, ho!”16 This new beginning must be given its
rightful due, there is no way back to the cosmic order from which the ego
cogito emerged, and in this sense Hegel creates a particularly powerful
amalgamation of absolute subjectivity and modernity, understood as the
truth of the preceding tradition. Even though his idea of “science” goes far
beyond the rationalist version—in fact, Hegel is sharply critical of the
overconfidence in mathematics and of any method that proceeds more
geometrico—the very idea of an all-encompassing science has unmistakable
roots in the Cartesian breakthrough.
On the other hand, Hegel stresses that this subject and the operations it
carries out in order to objectify and know the world must also be
understood as substance, i.e., as an intersubjective order embedded in
institutions, customs, and practices, or in “objective spirit,” as he would
later call it. Only in this way can the subject come to know itself in a
qualified sense, as the bearer of a rationality that transcends it. If Hegel is a
post-Cartesian, this does not mean that he can be taken exclusively as the
culmination of a philosophy of subjectivity, as Heidegger often seems to
suggest; he is just as much a thinker of intersubjective practices. This is the
basic tenet of the contemporary “non-metaphysical” reading favored both
in the analytical as well as the hermeneutic tradition, where the notion of
“spirit” is reinterpreted in a decidedly non-religious sense that tends
towards sociology, as those practices that underwrite and support a certain
culture’s understanding of itself, and which are absolute in the sense that
they have no simple “outside.” For others this resolute severing of Hegel’s
texts from their metaphysical presuppositions, whose structuring role may

16
See Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Werke 20, 120. We can note that
the metaphor of the terra firma, first employed with reference to Heraclitus, returns
here.

11
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

be debated, but whose presence is hard to deny, may not be so much a way
to put Hegel back on his feet, as Marx once attempted, as a cutting off of his
head; the future will decide the extent to which such readings once and for
all manage to separate the “rational core” from the “mystical shell,” as Marx
claimed to do, or just simply provide a disfigured portrait.17
The equation that links subject to substance, and that will produce the idea
of the system as the necessary mode of existence of truth, also has a decisive
historical background in Kant’s critical philosophy. Kant too creates a kind of
system or “architectonic” that reintegrates the splits and divisions—freedom
and necessity, body and soul, reason and nature, etc.—that had been
produced by Enlightenment culture. For Kant, all of the earlier theories could
be understood as partial truths that, however, lose their legitimacy when they
are extended to experience as a totality. The unity of reason that was
determined by Descartes on the basis of the mathesis consists for Kant in an
articulation of levels and domains that must be distinguished as well as
united. The unity of reason does not imply that one particular theory should
be applied to everything, but calls for a “transcendental reflection” on the
relation between spheres of rationality, i.e., on the principles that provide
each of them with a particular legislative autonomy while also connecting
them on a higher level within a system of ends. The Kantian mind is thus
necessarily fractured: it has several positions and functions depending on the
telos of its activity, but at the same time it always strives for a unity that in
Kant’s vocabulary could be called a “regulative idea,” or a focus imaginarius as
he says toward the end of the first Critique (A 644/B 672).18 In this way, Kant’s
critical restructuring of reason prefigures the analysis of modernity as a
process of rationalization that Max Weber more than a century later would
describe in terms of “disenchantment” and bureaucracy, and as the
emergence of science and politics as “professions” with their respective

17
Rolf-Peter Horstmann has argued for the inseparability of Hegel’s various arguments
and specific insights and, on the other hand, such systematic presuppositions, which for
him results in a rather pessimistic assessment of the possibility of retrieving Hegel for
contemporary purposes: we must swallow him whole or not at all. See Horstmann,
“What is Hegel’s Legacy and What Should We Do With It?” European Journal of
Philosophy 7 (2) (1999).
18
Kant is obviously not referring to the idea of a system in the developed sense of the
term, but his claim that the transcendental idea provides the “greatest unity alongside
the greatest extension” is precisely what the later system philosophies will attempt to
realize.

12
 INTRODUCTION

competences and procedures.19 Kant can indeed be taken as the first

bureaucrat of pure reason, and his invention of a new type of legally and
juridically inflected vocabulary—“the tribunal of reason” and the idea of the
philosopher as a judge—testifies to this.
After Kant many efforts will be made to rethink this architectural
synthesis and indicate a place where a new kind of unity or grounding could
be located, and not just in terms of an imaginary focus: reconciliation
(Versöhnung) must be real, and not just a representation, as Hegel says.20
This is one of the fundamental ways in which history enters philosophy,
and to Kant’s successors he appeared as naive in simply accepting and
systematizing, in an a priori fashion, divisions that in fact had been brought
about by the historical process. The responses of Schiller and Hölderlin, and
then of Schelling and Hegel, were to introduce the density of the historical
process as an essential moment in thought (which can also be understood as
a transformation that the concept of history itself underwent in Schelling
and Hegel, as is pointed out by Walter Jaeschke in his contribution below).
The question of philosophical validity will henceforth be related to the
question of historical becoming. Here we pass from a “structural analysis of
truth” to an “ontology of actuality,” in Foucault’s felicitous phrase,21 which
he applies to Kant’s political writings, but which in fact more accurately
describes Kant’s immediate aftermath. After Kant the historical task will
present itself as the overcoming of the distinctions that Kant had made into
absolutes, and as the restoration of a unity of reason and world on a higher
level, not just as a correlation of ends that we may “reflect” upon, but as a
truly substantial and living unity.
The present now appears as a moment of Entzweiung and Zerrissenheit, a
splitting and laceration that results from the Enlightenment and its
“philosophy of reflection.” This is how the young Hegel paints the present
age in his thesis, Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der

19
See for instance the two classic lectures by Weber, “Science as Vocation” (1917) and
“Politics as Vocation” (1918), in Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, trans. Rodney
Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).
20
One case among many would be the introduction to the lectures on aesthetics, where
Hegel suggests that Kant brought the “reconciled contradiction” into the space of
“representation” (Vorstellung), but failed both to develop its concept in a scientific
fashion, and to demonstrate it in reality. See Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, Werke 13, 84.
21
See for instance the sections on Kant and the Enlightenment in Foucault, Le
gouvernement de soi et des autres: Cours au collège de France (1982–1983), ed. Frédéric
Gros (Paris: Seuil, 2008).

13
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

Philosophie of 1801, where the “need for/of philosophy” (das Bedürfnis der
Philosophie) is at once a subjective and objective genitive: the present needs
philosophy to overcome itself just as much as philosophy needs to take a
new step to truly become itself. The philosophy of the future, Hegel
suggests, must transcend mere reflection in a movement of speculation, i.e.
the recognition that we ourselves have in fact produced all the inherited
dualisms. Speculation means returning from reflection to a higher identity
that acknowledges difference and splitting as part of itself, to the identity of
identity and non-identity. This move however requires a speculative leap, an
event in thought and language—and here it is tempting to follow Heidegger
and play on the German word Satz,22 which means both “leap” and
“sentence”—but it also demands that we remain rational and not succumb
to the Romantic temptation to project reconciliation into the sphere of that
which transcends reason (for instance into art, as was proposed by
Schelling), since this entails the risk that the leap will become a deadly one,
a salto mortale plunging us into the abyss of non-knowledge.
This is one of the reasons why Hegel always remained critical of all
attempts to return to some pre-modern unity, for instance the various
versions of ancient Greece that had been proposed in the wake of
Winckelmann (although these ideas were in fact based on a misreading of
Winckelmann: for him, too, Greece was irretrievably lost, and the invention
of art history is a work of mourning).23 This return is however just as often
proposed as a way into the future, as in the case of the anonymous fragment
that since its discovery by Franz Rosenzweig has been called “The Oldest
System Program of German Idealism,” dating from 1796/97 (the hand-
writing is undoubtedly Hegel’s, and he is now generally accepted as its
author),24 which proposes an idea of a future synthesis of art and philosophy
that will echo in many subsequent visions of a social-political Gesamt-
kunstwerk, from Wagner and Nietzsche onwards, on both sides of the

22
See Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, 20f, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske,
1957), 106f, and the comments on the structure of Hegel’s “speculative Satz” in the
second seminar in Le Thor, in Seminare, Gesamtausgabe vol. 15, ed. Curd Ochwadt
(Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1986), 325.
23
For readings of Winckelmann along these lines, see Edouard Pommier, Winckelmann:
Inventeur de l’histoire de l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 2003), and Elisabeth Decultot, Johann
Joachim Winckelman: Enquête sur la genèse de l’histoire de l’art (Paris: PUF, 2000).
24
For discussions of this text, see Christoph Jamme and Helmut Schneider (eds.),
Mythologie der Vernunft: Hegels ältestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus
(Frankurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984).

14
 INTRODUCTION

political spectrum. This new world on the one hand constitutes the
fulfillment of the Enlightenment, since it needs to have passed through the
moment of sundering and reflection, but it is also a step beyond it. Hegel
initially shared something of this Romantic desire to take “the step beyond
the Kantian borderline,” as Hölderlin calls it in an important letter,25 and
the System Fragment is an obvious case of this, but as we have already
remarked, he soon comes to the conclusion that this step or leap must
preserve reason and the superior status of philosophy. Absolute knowledge
will consist in a conceptual explication of the rational structure of the
world, not in any intuitively created work of art or an “intellectual
intuition” that lays claim to immediacy. The absolute, Hegel stresses in the
preface to the Phenomenology, can neither appear as “shot from out of a
pistol,” like Fichte’s subject, nor can it descend into a “night where all cows
are black,” like Schelling’s absolute qua indifference, but rather can only
come at the end, as the result of the totality of conceptual mediations. The
Phenomenology, then, will be the project of attaining the absolute beyond
the confines of finitude, respecting while also displacing the critical and
epistemological claims of Kantianism.

From consciousness to the absolute

The Phenomenology is a sustained and grandiose attempt to lead “natural

consciousness” to the completion of absolute knowledge, and to do this by
following the movement of consciousness itself. We start off with the most
meager of all conceptions of knowledge, “sense-certainty,” which claims to
have the full richness of the world at its disposal by using words such as
“here,” “this,” and “now,” and by trying to hold on to the sensuous particular
in its immediacy, either in the form of the object or the subject. This first
claim however defeats itself, for as soon as sense-certainty attempts to say
what it means, it is forced into the element of universality, which here for
Hegel appears as language, the more “truthful” element in the process of
Aufhebung, the negating yet preserving of the particular. This is the starting
point of the dialectic, and it is crucial for Hegel that the movement of

25
Letter to Neuffer, October 10, in Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, eds. F. Beissner and A.
Beck (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1946-85), vol. 6, 137.

15
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

negation and preservation not be forced upon consciousness from the

outside, by “us,” i.e. the narrator and/or reader of the Phenomenology, but
that it occur because of the way in which consciousness tests itself by always
supposing a standard it subsequently proves unable to live up to. In this way,
natural consciousness is driven from station to station, which for it is a
painful journey, akin the stations of the cross, an experience of loss and
despair that forces it to face up to the power of the negative. For us, who
observe this process, the journey means that consciousness attains higher and
higher levels of understanding of the necessary intertwining of the world and
consciousness, until finally, at the moment of absolute knowing, both come
together into a unity which still preserves all the former articulations as an
“interiorized” and “remembered” content.
The difficulty with this conception, the implications of which extend
beyond Hegel exegesis, is the question whether these two perspectives, the
immanence of a finite consciousness that undergoes the experiences and the
transcendence of the narrator, who addresses us as the “we” that “knows,”
can truly be brought together. (There is also the rarely noticed third
position of the reader, who knows more than finite consciousness but less
than the infinite narrator, and can only be included in the superior narrator
called “we” in an insecure and tenuous fashion, which is an experience that
most readers can recognize). What type of discourse would be able to bridge
the gap between finite and infinite, so as to allow the infinite to emerge out
of the finite, while still respecting the strictures of the latter?
This question is further highlighted by the structure of the philosophical
system as Hegel sketches it in the preface to the Phenomenology. If the
Phenomenology was intended as a “propedeutic” to the true science, and if
the latter is identified with the system of categories and absolute
determinations of being of which Hegel would subsequently propose a first
version in his Science of Logic (1812–1816), then this system appears no
longer to need, or perhaps even tolerate, a genesis from the point of view of a
consciousness that undergoes finite and one-sided experiences. This question
whether there can be an “introduction to the Science of Logic” was already
posed in Hegel’s own time, and has been brought up many times since, most
recently in the debate sparked by Hans Peter Fulda’s Das Problem einer
Einleitung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik, with subsequent responses from

16
 INTRODUCTION

Otto Pöggeler, Werner Marx, and many others.26 The question at stake can be
formulated in different ways, for instance as follows: Does Hegel’s
Phenomenology already presuppose the structures of the Logic for the
movement of dialectics to get started? If this is the case, then the
Phenomenology surely cannot be claimed to be a “science” on its own. But
what should we then make of the two titles that Hegel puts before the text of
the Phenomenology, “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” and
“System of Science, Part One: The Phenomenology of Spirit”?
Questions of philology apart—which on the one hand are a result of the
confusion concerning titles and subtitles in the Phenomenology, most of
which are due to printing errors, and which on the other hand must
acknowledge the obvious biographical fact that Hegel’s conception had
surely evolved between 1807 and 1812, and that his idea of the absolute
system was constantly in flux, even at the end—the philosophical problem is
to what extent the perspective (which can no longer be a perspective) of
absolute knowledge can be harmonized with a situated experience, i.e., how
infinity can be reconciled with the finitude of experience. In the preface to
the Phenomenology, Hegel speaks of how contemporary consciousness no
longer tolerates dogmas and imposed solutions, and that it demands that a
“ladder” should be given to it so that it may ascend to the heaven of the
concept. But if the ladder is itself part of a science that on the other hand
neither needs nor even tolerates it, do we not then see an unbridgeable gulf
opening up in the midst of Hegel’s system? There would be no way from
finitude to infinity, and no way back, once we have passed over to the
concept. Modern phenomenological philosophies of finitude, from Husserl
to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and onwards, would in this way amount to a
return to an immanent perspective: a method that stays within finite
consciousness, substitutes the analysis of intentionality, noetic-noematic
correlations, and constitution for the false and impossible passage towards
infinity promised by Hegel, and rejects the split vision of his system as
contradictory and dogmatic metaphysics.

26
See Hans Peter Fulda, Das Problem einer Einleitung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik
(Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1965) and “Zur Logik der ‘Phänomenologie’ von
1806,” in Fulda and Dieter Henrich (eds.), Materialien zu Hegels “Phänomenologie des
Geistes” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), Otto Pöggeler, “Die Komposition der
‘Phänomenologie des Geistes,’” ibid., and Werner Marx, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,
trans. Peter Heath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

17
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

Something similar would also apply to the concept of spirit: For Hegel, at
least as he is read traditionally, spirit would be a going beyond of all finite
perspectives toward an absolute subject that finds itself in its otherness and
returns to itself in the circularity of the ab-solute as that which is ab-solved
from external reality. In rejecting the onto-theological structure of the
speculative method, modern philosophies of finitude would then be led to
view a concept like Geist with the utmost suspicion, as the remnant of a
theological discourse that can have little or no credibility today. Geist in this
view is not so much a Cartesian ghost in the machine as the name for an
impossible and untenable third-person objectivity of the subject-object
correlation, which has to be abandoned if we are to adhere to a strict
analytic of finitude, whether this be in the Husserlian or Heideggerian
version.27 Against this, other readings have, as we noted, stressed the
pragmatic and social dimension of the term, which too, although from a
different perspective, amounts to reading it in the sense of cultural and
conceptual finitude. In this sense, Hegel’s “spirit” is a concept that either
must be rejected, or understood in a way that departs from several of
Hegel’s own metaphysical and theological presuppositions.
These structural complexities, and the question of whether Hegel
consummates something called the “metaphysical” tradition, belong to the
systematic horizon against which the Phenomenology as a whole in the final
analysis is to be measured. But it must also be stressed that the text as it
stands remains an almost infinite resource of philosophical ideas, no matter
how we judge its ultimate position inside some Hegelian system, the very
existence of which is in fact highly tenuous: if the Science of Logic in its first
version already testifies to a different view of the system than the one
announced in the preface to the Phenomenology, this also shows that the
question of the first book’s compatibility with the rest of the system must in
several respects remain conjectural. Regardless of how we judge the book’s

27
Against this “official” version of phenomenology, it has been claimed that the
discourse on Geist is by no means absent from Husserl and Heidegger, but in fact often
surfaces in critical places, as Derrida claims; see De l’esprit: Heidegger et la question
(Paris: Galilée, 1987). This is particularly connected to the way in which both Husserl
and Heidegger conceptualize Occidental history and philosophy, fusing them into a
unity where the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history become one gradual
unfolding of a singular structure, regardless of whether this is understood as a teleology
of reason that has to be saved from the danger of an irresponsible technicism and a
forgetfulness of the constitutive role of transcendental subjectivity, as in Husserl’s Krisis,
or as a progressive oblivion of being, where Husserl’s recourse to a constituting
subjectivity is part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as in Heidegger.

18
 INTRODUCTION

ultimate claim, we still need to traverse the text of the Phenomenology

itself, on a path that will take us through a series of “shapes of
consciousness” (Gestalten des Bewussteins), and on this long and laborious
journey we encounter many figures that after Hegel have become detached
from the movement of the Phenomenology as such, and have entered into a
general philosophical vocabulary. We move through the dialectic of master
and slave, which links together death, desire, and work (perhaps the most
famous figure, which through the highly original reading proposed by
Kojève in the 1930s became the matrix for a long tradition of philosophies
of desire, from Sartre and Bataille to Lacan and Deleuze);28 unhappy
consciousness, which was first emphasized and read as an autonomous
problem by Jean Wahl in the 1920s;29 Antigone and Creon, who in Hegel’s
reading both believe they are doing the right thing and in this will tear
asunder the harmonious fabric of Greek ethical life; the “lacerated
language” of Rameau’s Nephew, which completes the movement of Bildung
in a vertiginous re-evaluation of all values, and at the end of l’ancien régime
already proposes something that comes close to Nietzsche’s analysis of
nihilism; the French revolution and the subsequent terror that, in its
affirmation of absolute freedom, unleashes the “fury of destruction”; and
the beautiful soul who retreats into himself and his moral certitude, and
wants to find peace by always forgiving the crimes of the other. Without
here attempting to produce an exhaustive list, we can see the extent to
which Hegel’s text brings together analyses of philosophical theories and
political events, artworks and religious experiences, virtually all the facets of
existence in a narrative that claims to be both historical and logical, or,
more precisely, includes and transcends both of these categories.

28
For a discussion of this line of interpretation, see Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire:
Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1987). It must be emphasized that the story of French readings of Hegel does not
in fact begin with Kojève. The reception in the 1920s and ’30s—where we, apart from
Kojève, find Jean Wahl’s important Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de
Hegel (1929), but also works, little known today, by Alain, Victor Basch, and Victor
Delbos—attempts to limit the validity of the dialectic to human history and praxis, and
forms reaction against earlier readings, even less known today, which presented a
panlogicist Hegel whose interpretation of the sciences was highlighted. For a discussion
of the first phases of this reception, see Bruce Baugh, French Hegel: From Surrealism to
Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 2003), chap. 1.
29
See the previous note. The influence of Wahl’s book on subsequent existential
phenomenology is shown by Baugh, French Hegel.

19
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

Since the publication of the book, the debate has raged as to whether all,
or some, or perhaps none of its chapters can be read as a reflection on
empirical history. While there is an undeniable presence of historical
narration in the book (specifically in the chapters on spirit and religion),
and many of the factual events that are obliquely alluded to in the text seem
to have a much more important structuring role than that of mere
illustrations (this theme is treated in Sven-Olov Wallenstein’s contribution
below, with particular reference to art) the question remains as to how this
squares with the attempt to provide an epistemological and not simply
historical explanation of the succession of figures. It has been proposed that
the text is in fact is a “palimpsest,” resulting from the fact that Hegel
changed his outlook in the process of writing or even “lost control” of it,30
and which should lead us to distinguish between a true and a merely
apparent phenomenology. Others have proposed that this structural
confusion, especially in the latter half of the book, simply results from a
failed because insufficiently thought-through attempt to combine
perspectives that in fact are irreconcilable.
Yet many readers perceive Hegel’s later and perhaps more coherent
versions of the system, as they develop from the first edition of the
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817) onwards, as much more
sterile and artificially constructed than the dramatic writing of the
Phenomenology, precisely because of its violent tensions, enigmatic
transitions, and often insane complexity. The contorted architectonic of
Hegel’s phraseology somehow suggests there was a need for a language of
laceration, one that could only be turned into a system at the expense of its
violence and labyrinthine beauty. Perhaps this is what Hegel himself
discovered toward the end of life, when he planned to revise the text for a
new edition—almost immediately after having begun he broke off and
noted: “Curious early work, not to be rewritten” (“Eigenthümliche frühere
Arbeit, nicht Umarbeiten”).31

30
See Pöggeler, Hegels Idee einer Phänomenologie, 350.
31
See Hegel’s note in Wolfgang Bonsiepen’s edition of the Phenomenology in the
Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1980), 448.

20
 INTRODUCTION

Translating Hegel into the present

The initial question that provided the impetus for this collection was
whether it is possible, indeed even desirable, to “translate” Hegel into a
contemporary philosophical idiom—be it phenomenology, deconstruction,
critical theory, analytical philosophy, or something else entirely. The
seeming advantage of a translation in this sense is that it makes Hegel easier
to comprehend, and eliminates many of his idiosyncrasies, or at least
translates these idiosyncrasies into our own. In creating a context for his
thought that would appear to allow it to be assimilated into our present
concerns, it sets up a framework that allows us to discern “what is living and
what is dead in Hegel,” to use Croce’s famous formulation.32 Yet which
idiom, or idioms, would be most appropriate to this act of translating?
Which type of philosophy is the proper “heir” to Hegelianism? What type of
vocabulary would be able to transcribe, in the most faithful way, the
language of idealism?
For a long time, enmity towards Hegel was endemic within analytical
philosophy (according to Russell, the expulsion of the Hegelian ghost was
one of those acts that allowed the analytical tradition to come into its own),
whereas in German philosophical culture, he has always been central, at
least up to the later phases of the Frankfurt School; since Kojève’s lectures in
the 1930s, he has been a major influence on French thought, in particular
because the creation of a compound “phenomenology” based on the Hegel-
Husserl-Heidegger triad provided his texts with an immediate relevance to
the present situation. The antagonism in the Hegel reception may have
become weaker today, as a “post-analytical” philosophy, drawing on
pragmatism, but on other sources as well, begins to look to Hegel for
inspiration, although resistance to Hegel has by no means disappeared.
On the other hand, one must also be aware of the risks attending the
above sort of “translation.” It is not impossible that the “post-metaphysical”
Hegel often presented today in fact amounts to a flattening of historical
depth, a foreshortening of perspective that deprives his thought of its
productive distance and difference with respect to the present. There may
be something essentially Hegelian, and not just in the sense of a “historically
true” Hegel (for instance his systematic intention, which, if taken at face

32
Benedetto Croce, Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel (Bari: Laterza,
1907); What is living and what is dead of the philosophy of Hegel, trans. Douglas Ainslie
(Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche, 2001).

21
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

value, would prohibit a reading that develops some of his ideas while
leaving others aside), but in the sense of something that might act as an
illuminating counterpoint, or even as a challenge, to the present, that gets
lost in this translation.
The question is whether “translating” could mean something other than
a mere transposition of one vocabulary into another, for example: might it
allow for a kind of transformation of both the present and the past? Is there
something like a “hermeneutic situation” (as the concept is developed by
Heidegger) that should guide our relation to Hegel today? And if this
“situation” were to be determined as the end of metaphysics—versions of
which, in addition to the Heideggerian, have indeed proliferated in
modernity: the overturning of Platonism, the death of God, the impos-
sibility of a philosophical system, the dissolution of philosophy into the
sciences, and for that matter the idea of a “postmetaphysical” philosophy—
what would this imply for our reading of Hegel, who was the first to
proclaim the end of metaphysics (albeit in terms of its completion and
fulfillment)?
Finally, and at a more straightforward level, there is the question of the
extent to which the above bears upon the practice of the translator of Hegel.
(A question addressed in the contributions of Delaney and Lefebvre.)
Hegel’s German, especially in the Phenomenology, was a very unusual
German—a violent stretching and bending of the limits of syntax according
to the logic of the “speculative proposition” delineated in the preface: a
“conflict between the form of a proposition per se and the unity of the
concept which destroys that form,” producing a discourse that “destroys the
distinction between subject and predicate” to such an extent that it is “only
the kind of philosophical exposition which rigorously excludes the ordinary
relations among the parts of a proposition which would be able to achieve
the goal of plasticity.”33 The general questions posed above of the
appropriate contemporary “idiom” for Hegelianism bear on the choices of
the translator, and, of course, the translator’s choices affect the contempor-
ary reception of Hegel.

33
Translation from Terry Pinkard’s still unpublished translation (2008), currently (2011-
07-27) available online at: http://web.mac.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_
page.html.

22
 INTRODUCTION

The contributions in this volume

The first contribution, Robert Pippin’s “On Hegel’s Claim that Self-
Consciousness is ‘Desire in General’ (‘Begierde überhaupt’)” takes its point
of departure in the chapter on self-consciousness. This claim about self-
consciousness, Pippin suggests, is embedded in a complex and highly
counterintuitive general position on self-consciousness. That position is:
from the minimal sense of being aware of being determinately conscious at
all (apperception), to complex avowals of who I am, of my own identity and
deep commitments, Hegel develops a notion of self-consciousness as a
practical achievement of some sort. It must be understood as the result of
an attempt, and never, as it certainly seems to be, as an immediate presence,
and it often requires some sort of struggle. And furthermore, he sees such
an attempt and achievement as necessarily involving a relation to other
people, as inherently social. The crucial turning point in his argument is the
claim that self-consciousness should be understood as “desire in general.”
Pippin begins by highlighting the importance of Kantian apperception in
the first four chapters of the Phenomenology. This helps us see not simply
how the self-consciousness chapter is rooted in fundamentally Kantian
philosophical concerns, but, more importantly, is also much more
continuous with the previous three chapters of the Phenomenology. To be
sure, others have argued for the continuity of the first four chapters.
McDowell, for example, contends that the topics of “desire” and “life” in
chapter four are simply different ways of talking about the relation between
a subject and object, their mutual dependence and independence—in other
words, it is a continuation and attempt to finish off the problems remaining
at the end of chapter three. For Pippin the issue is more focused on the
nature of apperception—just what it is for a being to be not simply a
recorder of the world’s impact on one’s senses, but to be for itself in its
engagements with objects—and how Hegel believes this must become a
question of our practical engagement with the world, with others.
Like Pippin, Walter Jaeschke begins with the relevance of Hegel’s
predecessors, with a focus specifically on Schelling and Fichte. On the basis
of transcendental-philosophical conceptions of a “history of self-conscious-
ness,” Hegel’s Phenomenology is reinterpreted—in light of the conditions
of its genesis as a “genealogy of consciousness”—as a “genealogy of spirit,”
which for the first time displays the constitutive significance of the
historical formation of knowledge for knowledge itself. Jaeschke traces the

23
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

historical background of this new project, including the important but still
obscure details of how and when Hegel conceived the idea that the history
of self-consciousness falls within time.
Because the historical path of the experience of self-consciousness is,
finally, the path of becoming science, the Phenomenology takes on the
function of an introduction to Hegel’s System of Science. Beyond the
questions for Hegel scholars about the role of the Phenomenology in the
rest of Hegel’s system, there is also the matter of transforming the
problems posed by the Phenomenology into, or seeing them as applicable
to, present problems and methods in philosophy. After all, the question of
the relation of continually unfolding spheres of objective spirit to one
another, and to absolute spirit, has by no means been solved, nor perhaps
even adequately posed.
If there is anything associated with Hegel, rightly or wrongly, it’s the
notion of the historical nature of truth. Nonetheless, Hegel by no means
wants to give up the role of philosophy as the contemplation of eternal
truths. Terry Pinkard argues in his contribution that the final chapter of the
Phenomenology, “Absolute Knowledge,” is about precisely the har-
monization of these two seemingly mutually contradictory aspects: that
philosophy is the contemplation of eternal truths, and that philosophy is its
own time grasped in thoughts.
The final chapter, “Absolute Knowledge,” has often been claimed to be
the most difficult chapter in an already excruciatingly difficult work. Hegel
attempts not just to summarize the entire path traversed by con-
sciousnesses, but also to explain absolute knowledge. Part of what we learn
in the Phenomenology is that a concept cannot be understood, or even
exist, apart from its being put into practice. The concept of sense-certainty
qua absolute judgment, for example, means nothing until we try to “realize”
it, at which point we grasp it, and also see its limits. How is absolute
knowledge realized? Knowing, Hegel tells us in the penultimate paragraph
of the book, finally sees itself as historically contingent, its grasp of itself is
like seeing a “gallery of pictures”: grasping the particularities of our
historical development is the contingent; whereas grasping that spirit is
historical is the timeless.
The last chapter of the Phenomenology is also the point of departure for
Susanna Lindberg’s contribution. “Absolute Knowledge,” which presents
the ultimate Aufhebung of the book—the passage from finitude to infinity,
from representation to concept—is examined from the point of view of

24
 INTRODUCTION

Heidegger’s critique of Hegel. Heidegger holds that Hegel suppresses time,

ends history, and destroys the possibility of finite thinking.
Lindberg argues that, on the contrary, the concept actually produces
time; it is liberated in the form of nature and the past, instead of being
enslaved. Indeed, Heidegger’s selective readings of Hegel have acted as a
provocation, which has lead many scholars to show how Hegelian thinking
could actually be a thinking of a finite, contingent, natural, and figurative
reality. Lindberg presents an interpretation of spirit in a similar vein: spirit
is not a separate absolute cogito, but pure activity, a force of figuration and
defiguration. Such a spirit is not the opposite of finite reality: it is infinite
existence and a thinking of the finite.
Carl-Göran Heidegren is the first to have published a book-length
commentary on the Phenomenology in a Scandinavian language (Hegels
Fenomenologi: En analys och kommentar, 1995). Here, he addresses a
number of fundamental structural matters involved in interpreting the
Phenomenology. These include the problem of the two titles, and the two
separate tables of content.
Rather than choosing between the two tables of content, Heidegren
grounds an interpretation in the dynamic internal to consciousness
described by Hegel in the introduction, that consciousness develops via a
comparison between its object and the “in itself”—what it takes to be the
measure of the truth of its object. From this he develops a unique ordering
of the experience of consciousness into different “spheres,” from the
experience of “something other than itself” at the beginning of the book,
through the experience of itself as “absolute in the form of picture-thinking”
directly before Absolute Knowledge.
Staffan Carlshamre’s contribution, “Hegel’s Anomalous Functionalism,”
also comments on some structural questions posed by the book’s
bewildering table of contents, arguing that reason is both the third of a first
triad (C in one numbering), and the first of a second triad (AA in the next
triad of reason-spirit-religion): subject and object are united in reason after
the self-consciousness chapter, but this also makes reason able to play the
objective role in which spirit represents the subjective pole.
Carlshamre’s primary interest here is, however, “observing reason.” The
pattern of triads recurs at many levels in the Phenomenology, and observing
reason is the first of three parts of the reason chapter. Observing reason
itself has three main sections—the observation of physical nature, the
observation of the psyche, and the observation of the psycho-physical

25
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

relation between the body and the mind. Carlshamre points out the
contemporary relevance of Hegel’s discussion by highlighting his anti-
reductionism, a position Hegel maintains for conceptual rather than
metaphysical reasons. Biological categories cannot be reduced to the
categories of physics and chemistry; indeed, Hegel argues that there can be
no scientific laws connecting the two domains—as hinted in the title of this
article, his argument to that effect bears a certain resemblance to Donald
Davidson’s argument for the anomalousness of the mental.
Victoria Fareld’s contribution explores the ways in which Hegel’s
philosophy could be made into a key element in a political philosophy
which begins not with reason, sociality, or autonomy, but rather with
exposure, vulnerability, and dependence. She thus translates Hegel into our
time less by focusing on the historical context of his philosophy than by
seeking new, contemporary contexts for his ideas.
Fareld understands the dependence that is manifest in the struggle for
recognition as a state of being exposed. Understanding this dependence as
exposure makes possible a shift of focus from recognition to recognizability.
This, in turn, involves a shift from the relation between self and other to the
social space and the practices governing it. The emphasis on the larger
social process of recognizability raises a number of questions: Under what
conditions, under what social norms, is an individual recognizable as a
unique individual? What are the mechanisms that make some people
unrecognizable? Finally, she offers an argument for the contemporary
relevance of a certain way of thinking dialectically, by exploring the
condition of what she refers to as being made “dialectically redundant”—a
situation where some people appear as non-recognizable, by being
dialectically abandoned.
Sven-Olov Wallenstein investigates the dual role played by artworks and
aesthetic artifacts in Hegel’s writing. In Hegel’s many varying statements on
art, beginning with the earliest texts, moving through the Phenomenology
and up through the last lectures on aesthetics, art is present in two senses.
On the one hand, it is an object of analysis, and its role is circumscribed
within the logic of a historical narrative that treats it in terms of its capacity
to provide us with an adequate presentation of the movement of the
concept. In the Phenomenology, art thus gradually emerges from out of its
intertwinement with religion and finally reaches the state of “absolute
art”—and this is where it ends, in Greek comedy and a momentary state of
happiness, both unprecedented and without sequel, where man feels

26
 INTRODUCTION

completely at home in the world, but at the price of his own substance. In
this, the Phenomenology can be taken already to prefigure the later theses
on art that hold it to be a “thing of the past,” something that must be
superseded by philosophy as an adequate way of grasping the concept in the
medium of thought itself.
On the other hand, artworks often seem to function as what could be
called “operators.” In this respect, they operate as models for thought that
appear at strategically located junctures in the text, halfway between
conceptual articulations, which as such would be indispensable, and
illustrations, which would be merely sensuous and particular representa-
tions of properly conceptual structures. This use of art as a philosophical
tool doesn’t simply contradict the theses on art as a thing of the past with
respect to its “highest aim,” but in fact draws Hegel close to some of
Schelling’s ideas about art as an “organon,” and opens up the possibility of a
different type of exchange between art and philosophy that constitutes one
of the most vital aspects of the Hegelian heritage in contemporary
philosophy of art
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer argues that questions of translations and
interpretation of a philosophical author cannot be separated from questions
concerning the main topics and aims, the overall structure and the path of
the argument(s). With respect to the Phenomenology, this seems even more
true than with most other texts in the history of philosophy. Stekeler-
Weithofer proposes a reading of the text as a work of conceptual clarifi-
cation: it is a series of deconstructions of our ideas about ourselves, our
knowledge of and practical reference to things and to ourselves, and a
contribution to an analysis of the institutional status of understanding,
reason, intelligence, and spirit.
As an example of this, he undertakes a close reading of the opening part
of the chapter on self-consciousness (which addresses many of the themes
treated in Robert Pippin’s text), suggesting that we here encounter a
fundamental analysis of sociality that does not yet presuppose persons that
are able to act intentionally, but understands them as already conditioned
by social institutions.
The final two contributions deal with the act of translating the text of the
Phenomenology itself. Brian Manning Delaney, who, with Sven-Olov
Wallenstein, translated the Phenomenology into Swedish, compares the
challenges of translating Hegel into Swedish with the challenges of
translating Hegel into another Germanic language, English. He begins by

27
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

pointing out how the mere fact of the difficulty of Hegel’s German makes
translating him into any language extremely challenging. He shows how
aspects of the multiple meanings of German words can be more naturally
captured in Swedish, while the relative flexibility of English grammar, along
with its vast vocabulary, makes possible more precise translation choices.
Although German and English are, historically, more closely related than
German and Swedish, German and Swedish are both “original” languages,
in Vico’s sense, and this makes the literal senses of the words more palpable.
Yet this means that when the roots of a Swedish word are different from
those of the German word it translates— which, because of the historical
distance between German and Swedish, they often are—the “valence” of
Hegel’s text will seem very different to reader of Swedish; for example, Geist
(“a furious wind” to a German, like a ghost almost) might be, as ande in
Swedish, softer and more “airy”; an object (Gegenstand) doesn’t so much
resist (“stand against”) as provide an objective, or goal (föremål in Swedish–
“the goal before one”). This different feel might not necessarily be an
inaccuracy, but is perhaps rather an enrichment in our understanding of
Hegel, a new perspective on a thinker who is bound to remain enigmatic.
Given the difficulty of understanding Hegel, the enrichment provided by a
translation into a new language, with a distinct history, or even by new
translations into languages into which Hegel has already been translated,
likely exceeds any unavoidable loss in fidelity.
Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, who translated the Phenomenology into French in
1991, presents an analysis of the challenges of translating Hegel into French.
One important factor at play in his own translation that is absent in the
work of the Swedish translator of Hegel is a long tradition of translation of
philosophical texts from German to French. This itself has changed the
nature of translation, and even the nature of French philosophizing.
Whatever the existing storehouse of accepted—or partly accepted—
translation choices may make available, the historical distance of French
from German creates a particular challenge for the French translator.
On a more technical level, Lefebvre discusses the idea of parasitage, the
relation that a word, in its own language, exhibits in relation to its semantic
and thus cultural periphery, which prohibits a word-to-word translation,
and calls for an attentive understanding of the way in which language has
an economy, and limits the use of a purely technical vocabulary. Everyday
language, in this sense, is what philosophy must draw upon, but philosophy
also transforms it in an act of constant creation.

28
 INTRODUCTION

***

This collection of texts has its origin in a symposium dedicated to Hegel’s

Phenomenology, held at the Goethe Institute in Stockholm (September 5–7,
2008), on the occasion of the first Swedish translation of the text. In this
sense, the general rubric, “Translating Hegel,” took its cues from the
particularity of this occasion—which itself was a philosophical event, since
the Phenomenology had to wait more than 200 years to be translated into
Swedish—but also attempts to span a whole set of general philosophical
problems.
We would like to thank the Goethe Institute for hosting the event as well
as supporting it financially, the Department of Culture and Communication
and the Publications Committee at Södertörn University, and the Foundation
for Baltic and East European Studies, whose generous support was essential
both in organizing and in producing this book.

Stockholm, May 2012

Brian Manning Delaney

Sven-Olov Wallenstein

29
 On Hegel’s Claim that Self-Consciousness is
“Desire Itself” (Begierde überhaupt)
ROBERT B. PIPPIN

Kant held that what distinguishes an object in our experience from the mere
subjective play of representations is rule-governed unity. His famous
definition of an object is just “that in the concept of which a manifold is
united.” (B137) This means that consciousness itself must be understood as
a discriminating, unifying activity, paradigmatically as judging, and not as
the passive recorder of sensory impressions. Such a claim opens up a vast
territory of possibilities and questions since Kant does not mean that our
awake attentiveness is to be understood as something we intentionally do, in
the standard sense, even if it is not also a mere event that happens to us, as if
we happen to be triggered into a determinate mental state, or as if sensory
stimuli just activate an active mental machinery.
Kant also clearly does not mean to suggest by his claim that “the form of
consciousness is a judgmental form” that consciousness consists of thousands
of very rapid judgmental claims being deliberately made, thousands of “S is
P’s” or “If A then B’s” taking place. The world is taken to be such and such
without such takings being isolatable, intentional actions. What Kant does
mean by understanding consciousness as “synthetic” is quite a formidable,
independent topic in itself.1
Now Kant’s main interest in the argument of the deduction was to show
first that the rules governing such activities (whatever the right way to
describe such activities) cannot be wholly empirical rules, all derived from

1
I present an interpretation of the point in “What is Conceptual Activity?” forthcoming
in The Myth of the Mental?, ed. J. Shear.

31
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

experience, that there must be rules for the derivation of such rules that
cannot themselves be derived, or that there must be pure concepts of the
understanding; and secondly that these non-derived rules have genuine
“objective validity,” are not subjective impositions on an independently
received manifold, that, as he puts it, the a priori prescribed “synthetic unity
of consciousness” “[…] is not merely a condition that I myself require in
knowing an object, but is a condition under which any intuition must stand
in order to become an object for me.” (B138) Kant seems to realize that he
gives the impression that for him consciousness is a two-step process; the
mere reception of sensory data, and then the conceptualization of such data,
but he works hard in the pursuit of the second desideratum to disabuse his
readers of that impression.
Aside from some Kant scholars, there are not many philosophers who
still believe that Kant proved in this argument that we possess synthetic a
priori knowledge, although there is wide admiration for the power of Kant’s
arguments about, at least, causality and substance. But there remains a great
deal of interest in his basic picture of the nature of conscious mindedness.
For the central component of his account, judgment, is, as already noted,
not a mental event that merely happens, as if causally triggered into its
synthetic activity by sensory stimuli. Judging, while not a practical action
initiated by a decision, is an activity sustained and resolved, sometimes in
conditions of uncertainty, by a subject and that means that it is normatively
structured. The rules of judgment governing such activity are rules about
what ought to be judged, how our experience ought to be organized (we
distinguish, judge, for example, successive perceptions of a stable object as
really simultaneous in time, and not actually representing something
successive). Such rules are not rules describing how we do judge, are not
psychological laws of thought. And, to come to the point of contact with
Hegel that is the subject of the following, this all means that consciousness
must be inherently reflective or apperceptive. (I cannot be sustaining an
activity, implicitly trying to get, say, the objective temporal order right in
making up my mind, without in some sense knowing I am so taking the
world to be such, or without apperceptively taking it so. I am taking or
construing rather than merely recording because I am also in such taking
holding open the possibility that I may be taking falsely.) So all conscious-
ness is inherently, though rarely explicitly, self-conscious. It is incorrect to
think of a conscious state as just filled with the rich details of a house-
perception, as if consciousness merely registers its presence; I take or judge

32
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

the presence of a house, not a barn or gas station; or in Kant’s famous

formula: “the ‘I think’ must be able to accompany all my representations.”
But what could be meant by “inherently,” or “in some sense knowing I am
taking or judging it to be such and such”? In what sense am I in a relation to
myself in any conscious relation to an object? That is, the claim is that all
consciousness involves a kind of self-consciousness, taking S to be P and
thus taking myself to be taking S is P. But in a self-relation like this the self
in question cannot be just another object of intentional awareness. If it
were, then there would obviously be a regress problem. By parity of
whatever reasoning established that the self must be able to observe itself as
an object in taking anything to be anything, one would have to also argue
that the observing self must also be observable, and so one. The self-relation,
whatever it is, cannot be a two-place intentional relation.2

II

Hegel’s own most famous discussion of these issues is found in the first four
chapters of his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit (PhG hereafter). The first three
chapters of that book are grouped together under the heading “Con-
sciousness” and the fourth chapter is called simply “Self-Consciousness.”
(This fourth chapter has only one sub-section, called “The Truth of Self-
Certainty” and that will be the focus of the following discussion.3)
Accordingly, especially given the extraordinarily sweeping claims Hegel
makes about his indebtedness to the Kantian doctrine of apperception,4 one

2
The post-Kantian philosopher who first made a great deal out of this point was Fichte,
and the modern commentator who has done the most to work out the philosophical
implications of the point has been Dieter Henrich, starting with Fichtes ursprüngliche
Einsicht (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1967).
3
This is quite a typical Hegelian title, and can be misleading. By “The Truth of Self-
Certainty” (Die Wahrheit der Gewißheit seiner selbst), Hegel does not mean, as he seems
to, the truth about the self’s certainty of itself. He actually means, as we shall see, that the
truth of self-certainty is not a matter of self-certainty at all, just as sense-certainty was
not certain. This relation between subjective certainty and its realization in truth is a
basic structure of the PhG. Its most basic form is something like: the truth of the inner is
the outer, rather than anything suggested by the title (as in: how to explain the fact of
such self-certainty).
4
“It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure
Reason that the unity which constitutes the unity of the Begriff is recognized as the
original synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of the I think, or of self-
consciousness.” Wissenschaft der Logik, Bd. 12 in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-

33
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

would expect that these sections have something to do with the Kantian
points noted above, and so with the issue of the self-conscious character of
experience and the conditions for the possibility of experience so
understood. But there has been a lot of understandable controversy about
the relation between the first three chapters and the fourth. Since the fourth
chapter discusses desire, life, a struggle to the death for recognition between
opposed subjects, and a resulting Lord-Bondsman social structure, it has
not been easy to see how the discussion of sense-certainty, perception and
the understanding is being continued. Some very influential commentators,
like Alexandre Kojève, pay almost no attention to the first three chapters.
They write as if we should isolate the chapter on Self-Consciousness as a
free-standing philosophical anthropology, a theory of the inherently violent
and class-riven nature of human sociality. (There are never simply human
beings in Kojève’s account. Until the final bloody revolution ushers in a
classless society, there are only Masters and Slaves.) Others argue that in
chapter four, Hegel simply changes the subject to the problem of sociality.
We can see why it might be natural for him to change the subject at this
point, but it is a different subject. (Having introduced the necessary role of
self-consciousness in consciousness, Hegel understandably changes the
topic to very broad and different questions like: what, in general, is self-
consciousness? What is a self? What is it to be a being “for which” things
can be, to use Brandom’s language, who offers his own version of the
change-of-subject interpretation.)5 More recently, some commentators, like
John McDowell and Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, have argued that there is
actually neither a new beginning nor a shift in topics in chapter four. In
McDowell’s treatment the problem is an extension and development of the

Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968 - ), 221;

Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Amherst: Humanity Books, 1969), 584.
5
There are other interpretations which tend to isolate the argument in chapter four in
other ways, construing it as a kind of “transcendental argument” that aims to prove that
the “consciousness of one’s self requires the recognition of another self.” Axel Honneth,
“From Desire to Recognition: Hegel’s Account of Human Sociality” (ms forthcoming).
On that issue itself (“from desire to recognition”) and on the one and a half pages of
argument in Hegel that seek to establish this, Honneth has a number of valuable things
to say. But, as I will be arguing, no convincing interpretation of the chapter is possible
that does not explain the underlying structure of the “Consciousness-Self-Conscious-
ness” argument in the book as a whole. And I don’t believe that Honneth’s very brief
remarks about understanding ourselves as “creators of true claims” or “the rational
individual […] aware of its constitutive, world-creating cognitive acts” presents that
structure accurately.

34
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

one that emerged in the first three chapters but still basically concerns that
issue: how to understand the right “equipoise” between independence and
dependence in the relations between subjects and objects. What appear to
be the orectic and social issues of chapter four are for McDowell “figures” or
analogies for what remains the problem of the mind’s passive dependence
on objects and active independence of them in our experience of the world,
in just the sense sketched above in the summary of Kant (i.e. neither
independent subjective imposition, nor merely passive receptive depend-
ence). What we have is a picture of our active, spontaneous self in a kind of
mythic confrontation and struggle with its own passive empirical self,
struggling at first, futilely for radical independence, and then an initial but
doomed relation of dominance (as if the soul tries to make of its own
corporeal nature a Knecht or mere servant). So for McDowell, by “desire”
Hegel does not mean to introduce the topic of desire as a necessary element
in the understanding of consciousness itself (as the text, however counter-
intuitively, would seem to imply). Rather, says McDowell, “‘Desire über-
haupt’ functions as a figure for the general idea of negating otherness, by
appropriating or consuming, incorporating into oneself what at first figures
as merely other, something that happens in perception, say.”6 And “life,” the
next topic in the chapter, is said to exemplify the structure of der Begriff; let
us say: the basic logical structure of all possible intelligibility, all sense-
making.7 The struggle to the death for recognition is said to be a rich and
colorful “allegory” of the possible relations of the independent and
dependent sides within one consciousness. And so McDowell asserts that
chapter four does not yet directly introduce the issue of sociality at all,
despite the famous phrase there about the new presence of an “I that is a We
and a We that is an I.”
This interpretation has the very great virtue of preserving a connection
with the first three chapters, but, I will argue, while the general issue of the
logic of the relation between independence and dependence is certainly
applicable to the relation between spontaneous apperception and the
passive empirical self, McDowell’s interpretation, however rich in itself, fails

6
John McDowell, “The Apperceptive I and the Emprical Self: Towards a Heterodox
Reading of ‘Lordship and Bondage’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” in Hegel: New
Directions, ed. Katerina Deligiorgi (Chesham: Acumen, 2007), 38.
7
Especially the relation between universal and particular. And there is a good deal of
truth in that characterization. The experiencing subject inevitably becomes aware of
itself as a living being of a kind, something it shares with all other such beings, and itself
as a singular subject, whose own life is not “life” in general or its species-life.

35
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

to do justice to the radicality of what Hegel actually proposes. I want to

argue that Hegel means what he says when he says that self-consciousness is
“desire überhaupt,”8 if it is to be relevant to the question of the apperceptive
nature of consciousness itself, and that this thereby provides the basis for
the claim that self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-
consciousness.9
So here stated all at once is the thesis I would like to attribute to Hegel.
(That is, in chapter four. As noted, the entire book is a meditation on self-
consciousness, on the becoming self-consciousness of Geist.) I think that
Hegel’s position is that we misunderstand all dimensions of self-
consciousness, from apperception in consciousness itself, to simple, explicit
reflection on myself, to practical self-knowledge of my own so-called
“identity,” by considering any form of it as in any way observational or
inferential or immediate or any sort of two-place intentional relation.
However we come to know anything about ourselves (or whatever self-
relation is implicit in attending to the world), it is not by observing an
object, nor by conceptualizing an inner intuition, nor by any immediate
self-certainty or direct presence of the self to itself. From the minimal sense
of being aware of being determinately conscious at all (of judging), to
complex avowals of who I am, of my own identity and deep commitments,
Hegel, I want to say, treats self-consciousness as (i) a practical achievement

8
Hegel’s developmental procedure here requires a general cautionary note. The
identification of self-consciousness with desire occurs at a very early stage, as Hegel
begins to assemble the various dimensions and elements he thinks we will need in order
to understand the self-conscious dimension of consciousness. Initially Hegel is only
saying: we have at least to understand that self-consciousness must be understood as
mere desire (another sensible translation of “Begierde überhaupt”). It will prove
impossible to consider such self-consciousness as merely desire and nothing else, and
that impossibility is the rest of the story of the chapter. But this procedure means that
from now on self-consciousness must be still understood as inherently orectic, whatever
else it is.
9
Brandom also thinks of the PhG as an allegory; in his case an allegory of various
dimensions of the issue of conceptual content. Robert Brandom, “The Structure of
Desire and Recognition: Self-Consciousness and Self-Constitution,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism, 33 (2007), (hereafter SDR). For example, he thinks of Hegel’s treatment
of the struggle to the death as a “metonymy” for the issue of commitment (of “really”
being committed). But it is only that, one of many exemplifications of what it means in
fact to have the commitment that one avows. Being willing to lose one’s job, for example,
could be another exemplification. Here and throughout, I want to resist such allegorical
or figurative interpretations in both Brandom’s and McDowell’s accounts.

36
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

of some sort.10 Such a relation must be understood as the result of an

attempt, never, as it certainly seems to be, as an immediate presence of the
self to itself, and it often requires some sort of striving, even struggle (and
all of this even in accounting for the self-conscious dimension of ordinary
perceptual experience.) It, in all its forms, is some mode of mindedness that
we must achieve, and that must mean: can ultimately fail to achieve fully
and once having achieved can lose. It is nothing like turning the mind’s eye
inward to inspect itself. Admittedly, it seems very hard to understand why
anyone would think that my awareness, say, not just of the lecture I am
giving, but whatever kind of awareness I have that I am in the process of
giving a lecture, am actually following the appropriate rules, should involve
any such practical activity. It seems so effortless to be so self-aware; there is
no felt desire or striving or struggle involved, and as a report of what seems
to me to be the case, it even appears incorrigible. But Hegel wants to claim
that as soon as we properly see the error of holding that the self in any self-
awareness is immediately present to an inspecting mind, his own
interpretation is just thereby implied. If the self’s relation to itself cannot be
immediate or direct, but if some self-relation is a condition of intentional
awareness, the conclusion that it is some sort of to-be-achieved follows for
him straightforwardly.11 Even a minimal form of self-conscious taking
opens up the possibility of taking falsely or in a way inconsistent with other
(or all) such takings and so sets a certain sort of task. More on this in a
minute; this is the central motive for his version of the claim that
consciousness is apperceptive.12

10
This is contrary to the interpretation by Fred Neuhouser, “Desire, Recognition, and
the Relation between Bondsman and Lord, in The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s
Phenomenology, ed. K. Westphal (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 37-54, who argues
that Hegel in effect changes the subject from apperception to a practical self-conception
and self-evaluation. I think Hegel’s presentation is motivated by the internal
inadequacies of the Kantian notion of apperception. Without that issue in view, we
won’t have a sense of why the problem of self-consciousness’s unity with itself should
emerge here, which such a unity “must become essential to it” and the discussion of a
single self-conscious being certain of its own radical and complete independence
(Selbstständigkeit) will have to appear unmotivated, simply a new theme. Cf. 42.
11
So self-consciousness, while not “thetic,” to use the Sartrean word, or intentional or
positional, is not sort of or vaguely positional, caught at the corner of our eye, or
glimpsed on the horizon. It is not intentional at all.
12
John McDowell has suggested (in a response to a presentation of an earlier version of
this lecture at the Kokonas Symposium at Colgate University in November 2008) that
the notion of “achievement” is a misleading term here, that whatever achievement is
involved in being able to judge apperceptively should be understood along the model of

37
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

Another way of putting this point, one that ties in with almost every
aspect of Hegel’s philosophical approach, would be to point out that if self-
consciousness or any form of taking oneself to be or be committed to
anything is not introspective or observational then it must always be
provisional. Such a self-regard requires some confirmation or realization
out in the world and for others for it to count as what it is taken to be. The
clearest examples of this occur in Hegel’s theory of agency where one
cannot be said to actually have the intention or commitment one avows,
even sincerely avows, until one actually realizes that intention and the
action counts as that action in the social world within which it is enacted.
(And of course, people can come to find out that their actual intentions, as
manifested in what they actually are willing to do, can be very different
from those they avow, even sincerely avow.)13
And (ii) he sees such an attempt and achievement as necessarily
involving a relation to other people, as inherently social. This last issue
about the role of actualization begins to introduce such a dependence, but it
is hard to see at the outset why other people need be involved in the
intimacy and privacy that seems to characterize my relation to myself.

learning a language, of being initiated into a linguistic community, something that

involves no notion of struggle or practical achievement in the usual sense. It just
happens. But (a) Hegel is here describing just the minimal conditions for such a capacity
to be in effect and it is only as he explores the implications of the realization of this
capacity that he introduces the orectic and social issues that follow and (b) what Hegel is
describing is like the acquisition of a linguistic capacity as long as we admit that such an
acquisition finally has to involve much more than acquiring rules of grammatical
correctness. To be initiated into a linguistic community is to be initiated into all the
pragmatic dimensions of appropriateness, authority, who gets to say what, when and
why. One is not a “speaker” as such until one has learned such matters of linguistic usage
and Hegel wants to treat such norms in terms of their historical conditions, primarily in
this chapter the social conditions and social conflict “behind” any such norms. See also
his “On Pippin’s Postscript,” in Having the World in View (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2009). Cf. Habermas’s account of what a full pragmatics of language
has to take in, how full initiation into a linguistic community means that speakers “no
longer relate straightaway to something in the objective, social, or subjective worlds;
instead they relativize their utterances against the possibility that their validity will be
contested by other actors.” Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action,
trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984) Vol. I, 98-99. In Hegel’s account,
the standards for this unique kind of challenge to a speaker or agent cannot be made out
transcendentally or “quasi-transcendentally,” as Habermas sometimes says, but will
require the unusual reconstructive phenomenology under consideration here.
13
This issue is the central one and is explored at length in my Hegel’s Practical
Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008).

38
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

His case for looking at things this way has three main parts. In a way that
is typical of his procedure, he tries to begin with the most theoretically thin or
simple form of the required self-relation and so considers the mere sentiment
of self that a living being has in keeping itself alive, where keeping itself alive
reflects this minimal reflective attentiveness to self. Such a minimal form of
self-relatedness is shown not to establish the sort of self-relatedness
(normative self-determination) required as the desideratum in the first three
chapters. He then asks what alters when the object of the desires relevant to
maintaining life turns out not to be just another object or obstacle but
another subject and, in effect, he argues that everything changes when our
desires are not just thwarted or impeded, but challenged and refused. And he
then explores how the presence of such an other subject, in altering what
could be a possible self-relation, sets a new agenda for the rest of the
Phenomenology, for both the problems of sapience and agency.

III

The central passage where the putative “practical turn” in all this takes place
is the following.

But this opposition between its appearance and its truth has only the
truth for its essence, namely, the unity of self-consciousness with itself.
This unity must become essential to self-consciousness, which is to say,
self-consciousness is desire itself. (§167) (“Begierde überhaupt,” which
could also be translated as “desire in general,” or “desire, generally” or
“mere desire.” I am following here Terry Pinkard’s translation.)14

The passage presupposes the larger issue we have been discussing—the way
Hegel has come to discuss the double nature of consciousness (con-
sciousness of an object, a this-such, and the non-positional consciousness or
implicit awareness of my taking it to be this-such)15 and so the opposition,
or, as he says, the “negativity” this introduces within consciousness, the fact

14
Pinkard’s translation is a valuable facing-page translation and is available at
http://web.me.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html. The paragraph
numbers in the text refer to his translation as well.
15
“As self-consciousness, consciousness henceforth has a doubled object: The first, the
immediate object, the object of sense-certainty and perception, which, however, is
marked for it with the character of the negative; the second, namely, itself, which is the
true essence and which at the outset is on hand merely in opposition to the first.” (§167)

39
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

that consciousness is not simply absorbed into (“identified with”) its

contents, but has also, let us say, taken up a position toward what it thinks.16
To understand this, we need the following passage from the Introduction.

However, consciousness is for itself its concept, and as a result it

immediately goes beyond the restriction, and, since this restriction
belongs to itself, it goes beyond itself too. (§80)17

He is actually making two claims here. The first is the premise of his
inference: that “consciousness is for itself its concept.” The inference seems
to run: If we understand this properly, we will understand why he feels
entitled to the “and as a result,” the claim that consciousness is thereby
immediately “beyond” any such restriction or concept that it sets “for
itself.” (I want to claim that this all amounts to a defense of the claim that
consciousness must be understood as apperceptive.) He means to say that
normative standards and proprieties at play in human consciousness are
“consciousness’s own,” that is, are followed by a subject, are not psycho-
logical laws of thought. This is his version of the Kantian principle that
persons are subject to no law or norm other than ones they have subjected
themselves to.18 (This is what is packed into the “for itself” here.) This does
not mean either in Kant or in Hegel that there are episodes of self-
subjection or explicit acts of allegiance or anything as ridiculous as all that;

16
His formulation later in the Berlin Phenomenology is especially clear: “There can be no
consciousness without self-consciousness. I know something, and that about which I
know something I have in the certainty of myself [“das wovon ich weiss habe ich in der
Gewissheit meiner selbst”] otherwise I would know nothing of it; the object is my object,
it is other and at the same time mine, and in this latter respect I am self-relating.” G. W.
F. Hegel: The Berlin Phenomenology, trans. M. Petry (Dordrecht: Riedel, 1981), (here-
after, BPhG), 55.
17
He also introduces here a claim that will recur much more prominently in this account
of the difference between animal and human desire. “However, to knowledge, the goal is
as necessarily fixed as the series of the progression. The goal lies at that point where
knowledge no longer has the need to go beyond itself, that is, where knowledge works
itself out, and where the concept corresponds to the object and the object to the concept.
Progress towards this goal is thus also unrelenting, and satisfaction [n.b. the
introduction of Befriedigung] is not to be found at any prior station on the way. What is
limited to a natural life is not on its own capable of going beyond its immediate
existence. However, it is driven out of itself by something other than itself, and this being
torn out of itself is its death.” (§80).
18
This principle is of course primarily at home in Kant’s practical philosophy, but it is
also at work in the theoretical philosophy, particularly where Kant wants to distinguish
his own account of experiential mindedness from Locke’s or Hume’s.

40
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

just that norms governing what we think and do can be said to govern
thought and action only in so far as subjects, however implicitly or
habitually or unreflectively (or as a matter of “second nature”), accept such
constraints and sustain allegiance; they follow the rules, are not governed
by them. (As all the post-Wittgensteinean discussion of rule-following has
shown, there cannot be any rules for the following of these rules, so one
can be said to be following such rules in carrying out what is required
without any explicit calculation of how to do so.) How the allegiance gets
instituted and how it can lose its grip are matters Hegel is very interested
in, but it has nothing to do with individuals “deciding” about allegiances at
moments of time.) Or, to invoke Kant again, knowers and doers are not
explicable as beings subject to laws of nature (although as also ordinary
objects, they are so subject), but by appeal to their representation of laws
and self-subjection to them.
And he means this to apply in ordinary cases of perceptual knowledge
too. I know what would count as good perceptual reasons for an empirical
claim on the basis of whatever “shape of spirit” or possible model of
experience is under consideration at whatever stage in the PhG. That is,
Hegel considers empirical rules of discrimination, unification, essence/ap-
pearance distinctions, conceptions of explanation, etc., as normative
principles, and he construes any some set of these as a possible determinate
whole, as all being simply manifestations of the overriding requirements of
a “shape of spirit” considered in this idealized isolation of capacities that
makes up Chapters I-V, and he cites possible illustrations of such a shape
and such internal contradictions (determinate illustrative actual cases like
trying to say “this here now,” or trying to distinguish the thing which bears
properties from those properties).The concepts involved in organizing our
visual field are also norms prescribing how the visual field ought to be
organized and so they do not function like fixed physiological dispositions.
We are responsive to a perceivable environment in norm-attentive ways.
Finally, since the principles involved guide my behavior or conclusions only
in so far as they are accepted and followed, they can prove themselves
inadequate, and lose their grip. This is what Hegel means in the conclusion
of his inference by saying that consciousness “immediately goes beyond this
restriction.” It is always “beyond” any norm in the sense that it is not, let us
say, stuck with such a restriction as a matter of psychological fact;
consciousness is always in a position to alter norms for correct perception,
inferring, law-making or right action. Perception of course involves

41
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

physiological processes that are species-identical across centuries and

cultures, but perceptual knowledge also involves norms for attentiveness,
discrimination, unification, exclusion and conceptual organization that do
not function like physiological laws. And so (as Hegel says, “as a result”) we
should be said to stand always by them and yet also “beyond them.” (This
can all still seem to introduce far too much normative variability into a
process, perception, that seems all much more a matter of physiological fact.
But while Hegel certainly accepts that the physiological components of
perception are distinguishable from the norm-following or interpretive
elements, he also insists that they are inseparable in perception itself. As in
Heidegger’s phenomenology, there are not two stages to perception; as if a
perception of a white rectangular solid which is then “interpreted as” a
refrigerator. What we see is a refrigerator.)
The second dimension of this claim from §80 concerns how such
consciousness is “beyond itself” in another way. Besides the claim that
consciousness, as he says, “negates” what it is presented with, does not
merely take in but determines what is the case, the claim is also that
ordinary, everyday consciousness is always “going beyond itself,” never
wholly absorbed in what it is attending to, never simply or only in a
perceptual state, but always resolving its own conceptual activity; and this in
a way that means it can be said both to be self-affirming, possibly issuing in
judgments and imperatives, but also potentially “self-negating,” aware that
what it resolves or takes to be the case might not be the case. It somehow
“stands above” what it also affirms, to use an image that Hegel sometimes
invokes. It adds to the interpretive problems to cite his canonical
formulation of this point, but it might help us see how important it is for his
whole position and why he is using language like “negativity” for
consciousness itself. (Such terminology is the key explicans for his eventual
claim that self-conscious consciousness is desire.) This is from the
“Phenomenology” section of the last version of his Encyclopedia (The
“Berlin Phenomenology” again).

The I is now this subjectivity, this infinite relation to itself, but therein,
namely in this subjectivity, lies its negative relation to itself, diremption,
differentiation, judgment. The I judges, and this constitutes it as
consciousness; it repels itself from itself; this is a logical determination.19

19
BPhG, 2, my emphasis.

42
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

So the large question to which Hegel thinks we have been brought by his
account of consciousness in the first three chapters is: just what is it for a
being to be not just a recorder of the world’s impact on one’s sense, but to
be for itself in its engagements with objects? What is it in general for a being
to be for itself, for “itself to be at issue for it in its relation with what is not
it”? (This is the problem that arose with the “Kantian” revelation in the
Understanding chapter of the PhG that, in trying to get to the real nature of
the essence of appearances, “understanding experiences only itself,” which,
he says, raises the problem: “the cognition of what consciousness knows in
knowing itself requires a still more complex movement.” (§167, m.e.) This is
the fundamental issue being explored in chapter four. That the basic
structure of the Kantian account is preserved until this point is clear from:

With that first moment, self-consciousness exists as consciousness, and

the whole breadth of the sensuous world is preserved for it, but at the
same time only as related to the second moment, the unity of self-
consciousness with itself. (§167)20

This passage and indeed all of §167 indicate that Hegel does have in mind a
response to the problem of a self-conscious consciousness (of the whole
breadth of the sensible world) developed in the first three chapters (what is
the relation to itself inherent in any possible relation to objects?), and that
he insists on a common sense acknowledgement that whatever account we
give of a self-determining self-consciousness, it is not a wholly autonomous
or independent self-relating; the “sensuous world” must be preserved.
But it is at this point that he then suddenly makes a much more
controversial, pretty much unprepared for, and not a all recognizably
Kantian, claim.

But this opposition between its appearance and its truth has only the
truth for its essence, namely, the unity of self-consciousness with itself.
This unity must become essential to self-consciousness, which is to say,
self-consciousness is desire itself. (§167)

20
Cf. again the Berlin Phenomenology: “In consciousness I am also self-conscious, but
only also, since the object has a side in itself which is not mine.” (BPhG, 56).

43
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

Hegel is talking about an “opposition” between appearance and truth here

because he has, in his own words, just summarized the issue of
consciousness’s “negative” relation to the world and itself this way.

Otherness thereby exists for it as a being, that is, as a distinguished

moment, but, for it, it is also the unity of itself with this distinction as a
second distinguished moment. (§167)

That is, consciousness may be said to affirm implicitly a construal of some

intentional content, but since it has thereby (by its own “taking”) negated
any putative immediate certainty, since it is also always “beyond itself,” its
eventual “unity with itself,” its satisfaction that what it takes to be the case is
the case and can be integrated with everything else it takes to be case,
requires the achievement of a “unity with itself,” not any immediate
certainty or self-regard. (This is his echo of the Kantian point that the unity
of apperception must be achieved; contents must be, as Kant says,
“brought” to the unity of apperception.)
But still, at this point, the gloss he gives on the claim that “self-
consciousness is desire” is not much help. The gloss is, as if an appositive,
“This [the unity of self consciousness with itself] “must become essential to
self-consciousness, which is to say, etc.” The first hint of a practical turn
emerges just here when Hegel implies that we need to understand self-
consciousness as a unity to be achieved, that there is some “opposition”
between self-consciousness and itself, a kind of self-estrangement, which, he
seems to be suggesting, we are moved to overcome. The unity of self-
consciousness with itself “muß ihm wesentlich werden,” must become
essential to the experiencing subject, a practical turn of phrase that in effect
almost unnoticed serves as the pivot around which the discussion turns
suddenly and deeply practical. (As we shall see, it eventually does much
more clearly “become essential” as a result of a putative encounter with
another and opposing self-conscious being. And it is clearly practical in the
sense in which we might say to someone, “You’re wasting chances for
advancement; your career must become essential to you.”)
Since the self-conscious aspect of ordinary empirical consciousness is
much more like a self-determination, or one could say a resolve or a
committing oneself (what Fichte called a self-positing) than a simple self-
observation or direct awareness, he begins again to discuss consciousness as
a “negation” of the world’s independence and otherness. We are over-

44
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

coming the indeterminacy, opacity, foreignness, potential confusion and

disconnectedness of what we are presented with by resolving what belongs
together with what, tracking objects through changes and so forth.21 Hegel
then makes another unexpected move when he suggests that we consider
the most uncomplicated and straightforward experience of just this striving
or orectic for-itself-ness, what he calls life.

By way of this reflective turn into itself, the object has become life. What
self-consciousness distinguishes from itself as existing also has in it,
insofar as it is posited as existing, not merely the modes of sense-
certainty and perception. It is being which is reflected into itself, and the
object of immediate desire is something living . . . . (§168)

This is the most basic experience22 of what it is to be at issue for oneself as

one engages the world. As Hegel says, we begin with what we know we now
need, a “being reflected into itself,” and our question, how should we
properly describe the self of the self-relation necessary for conscious
intentionality and ultimately agency, is given the broadest possible referent,
its own mere life. We have something like a sentiment of self as living and,
as we shall see, needing to act purposively in order to live. Other objects too
are not now merely external existents, “not merely the modes of sense-
certainty and perception” (although they are also that) but now also (in
order to move beyond the empty formality of “I am the I who is thinking
these thoughts”) they are considered as objects for the living subject, as
threats to, means to, or indifferent to such life-sustaining. This brute or
simple for-itself quality of living consciousness (which form of self-relation
we share with animals) will not remain the focus of Hegel’s interest for long,
but, if it is becoming plausible that Hegel is indeed trying to extend the issue
raised in the Consciousness section (and neither changing the subject, nor
repeating the problem and desideratum in a figurative way) it already
indicates what was just suggested: that he is moving quickly away from

21
Cf. “The ‘I’ is as it were the crucible and fire which consumes the loose plurality of
sense and reduces it to unity. . . the tendency of all man’s endeavors is to understand the
world, to appropriate and subdue it to himself; and to this end the positive reality of the
world must be as it were crushed and pounded, in other words, idealized.” Enzyklopädie
der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Erster Teil. Die Wissenschaft der Logik, in Werke
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969-79), Bd. 8, 118; Hegel’s Logic, Being Part One of the
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982), 69.
22
That is, the one that presupposes the least.

45
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

Kant’s transcendental-formal account of the apperceptive nature of

consciousness. The I is “for itself” in consciousness for Kant only in the
sense that the I (whoever or whatever it is) must be able to accompany all
my representations. The world is experienced as categorically ordered
because I in some sense order it (I think it as such and such) and that
activity is not merely triggered into operation by the sense contents of
experience. It is undertaken, but I do so only in the broad formal sense of
temporally unifying, having a take on, the contents of consciousness,
bringing everything under the unity of a formally conceived apperceptive I.
(This simply means that every content must be such that one continuous I
can think it.) The “I” is just the unity effected. The subject’s relation to
objects is a self-relation only in this sense, and Hegel has introduced what
seems like a different and at first arbitrary shift in topics to my sustaining
my own life as the basic or first or most primary model of this self-relation,
not merely sustaining the distinction between, say, successions of
representations and a representation of succession.23

23
The section on life, essentially §168 to §174 is among the most opaque of any passages
in Hegel (which is saying something). What I need here is Hegel’s basic framework, in
which he starts with the claim that with our “reflective turn” (“durch diese Reflexion in
sich selbst”) consciousness is related to “life.” Self-relation as mere sentiment of oneself
as living and as having to maintain life though does not establish my taking up and
leading my determinate life as an individual. I am just an exemplar of the species
requirements of my species, playing them out within the infinite “totality” of life itself as
genus. Just by living I am nothing but a moment in the universal process of life, a kind of
Schellingean universal (who talked this way about life). But throughout, the framework
is: the first object of self-consciousness is life. That is, Hegel does not suddenly decide to
talk about life, just qua life. As he says several times, he wants to understand life as the
immediate object of desire (itself the most immediate form of self-relation), a sentiment
of self that opens a gap, something negative to be filled (requires the negation of barriers
to life and the negation of stasis, in the face of the need to lead a life). That is, I take a
main point to be that introduced in §168: in this self-relation, there is an “estrangement”
(Entzweiung), “between self-consciousness and life,” as he says. All through the phenom-
enology of “life as the infinite universal substance as the object of desire,” the problem
Hegel keeps pointing to is how, under what conditions, the self-relating can be said to
become a relating to self that is me, a distinction within the universal genus, life. I seem
rather just to submit myself to the imperatives or demands of life for my species. Rather
than being the subject of my desire, I am subject to my desire. The first three chapters
have already established the need to understand some sort of normative autonomy and
this first actuality of self-relatedness, life and leading a life, conflicts with this require-
ment unless such a subject can establish its independence of life. What is important to
my account here is the course of this “becoming determinate” account until it begins to
break into its conclusion, toward the end of §172, until “this estrangement of the
undifferentiated fluidity is the very positing of individuality” (“dies Entzweien der
unterschiedlosen Flüssigkeit ist eben das Setzen der Individualität”). Such a self-deter-

46
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

It is not arbitrary because Hegel has objected, and will continue to object
throughout his career, to any view of the “I” in “I think” as such a merely
formal indicator of the “the I or he or it” which thinks. In Hegel’s
contrasting view, while we can make a general point about the necessity for
unity in experience by abstracting from any determination of such a subject
and go on to explore the conditions of such unity, we will not get very far in
specifying such conditions without, let us say, more determination already
in the notion of the subject of experience. This criticism is tied to what was
by far the most widespread dissatisfaction with Kant’s first Critique (which
Hegel shared) and which remains today its greatest weakness: the
arbitrariness of Kant’s Table of Categories, the fact that he has no way of
deducing from “the ‘I think’ must be able to accompany all my
representations” what the I must necessarily think, what forms it must
employ, in thinking its representations. The emptiness of Kant’s “I” is
directly linked for Hegel to the ungroundedness and arbitrariness of his
Table of Categories.24
However, understanding this charge would take us deep into Hegel’s
criticisms of Kantian formality. What we need now is a clearer sense of what
Hegel is proposing, not so much what he is rejecting. Let me first complete
a brief summary of the themes in chapter four (once we begin reading it this
way) and then see where we are.

IV

As we have seen, if a self-conscious consciousness is to be understood as

striving in some way then the most immediate embodiment of such a
striving would be a self’s attention to itself as a living being.25 That is how it

mined individual must be established and that requires especially a different, non-
natural relation with another subject who must realize the same self-relatedness. What
Hegel struggles to say after this is why, without the inner mediation by the outer, i.e.
without a self-relation in relation to another self, this fails, a typically Hegelian coming a
cropper. See the different account in Neuhouser, op.cit., 43.
24
Hegel’s formulation of this point is given in §197 in his own inimitable style. “To think
does not mean to think as an abstract I, but as an I which at the same time signifies
being-in-itself, that is, it has the meaning of being an object in its own eyes, or of
conducting itself vis-à-vis the objective essence in such a way that its meaning is that of
the being-for-itself of that consciousness for which it is.”
25
It may help establish the plausibility of this reading to note how much this practical
conception of normativity and intentionality was in the air at the time. I have already

47
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

is immediately for itself in relation to other objects. Living beings, like

animals, do not live in the way non-living beings (like rocks or telephones)
merely exist; they must strive to stay alive, and so we have our first example
of the desideratum, a self-relation in relation to objects. Life must be led,
sustained, and this gap between my present life and what I must do to
sustain it in the future is what is meant by calling consciousness desire as
lack or gap, and so a negation of objects as impediments.26 If consciousness
and desire can be linked as closely as Hegel wants to (that is, identified)
then consciousness is not an isolatable registering and responding capacity
of the living being that is conscious. And if this all can be established then
we will at this step have moved far away from considering a self-conscious
consciousness as a kind of self-aware spectator of the passing show and
moved closer to considering it as an engaged, practical being, whose
practical satisfaction of desire is essential to understanding the way the
world originally makes sense to it (the way it makes sense of the world), or
is intelligible at all. Hegel’s claim is that consciousness is desire, not merely
that it is accompanied by desire. (Obviously this claim has some deep
similarities with the way Heidegger insists that Dasein’s unique mode of
being-in-the-world is Sorge, or care and with Heidegger’s constant
insistence that this has nothing to do with a subject projecting its pragmatic
concerns onto a putatively neutral, directly apprehended content.)
At points Hegel tries to move away from very general and abstract points
about living beings and desire and to specify the distinctive character of
desire that counts as “self-consciousness,” as was claimed in his
identification. He wants, that is, to distinguish actions that are merely the
natural expression of desire (and a being that is merely subject to its
desires), and a corresponding form of self-consciousness that is a mere

indicated how indebted this chapter is to Fichte. Ludwig Siep has clearly established how
much Hegel borrowed from Fichte for the later sections on recognition and his practical
philosophy in general. See his Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie
(Alber: Freiburg/Munich, 1979) and in many of the important essays in Praktische
Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1992).
26
Readers of Peirce will recognize here his category of “Secondness.” As in “you have a
sense of resistance and at the same time a sense of effort. […]. They are only two ways of
describing the same experience. It is a double consciousness. We become aware of
ourself [sic] by becoming aware of the not-self.” C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce, eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1931-5), vol. I, 324. An excellent exploration of the links between pragmatism and
Hegel is Richard Bernstein, Praxis and Action (Philadelphia, PA: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1971).

48
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

sentiment of self, from actions undertaken in order to satisfy a desire, the

actions of a being that does not just embody its self-sentiment but can be
said to act on such a self-conception. He wants to distinguish between
natural or animal desire and human desire and so tries to distinguish a cycle
of desires and satisfactions that continually arise and subside in animals
from beings for whom their desires can be objects of attention, issues at
stake, ultimately reasons to be acted on or not. This occurs in a very rapid
series of transitions in §175 where Hegel starts distinguishing the cycle of
the urges and satisfactions of mere desire from a satisfaction that can
confirm the genuinely self-relating quality of consciousness, rather than its
mere self-sentiment.
That is, we have already seen a crucial aspect of the structure of Hegel’s
account: that any self-relating is always also in a way provisional and a
projecting outward, beyond the near immediacy of any mere self-taking.
Conscious takings of any sort are defeasible, held open as possibilities and
so must be tested; and avowed commitments must be realized in action for
there to be any realization of the avowed intention (and so revelation of that
the subject was in fact committed to doing). The projected self-sentiment of
a merely living self is realized by the “negation” of the object of desire
necessary for life, part of an endless cycle of being subject to one’s desires
and satisfying them. This all begins to change at the end of the paragraph
(§175), as Hegel contemplates a distinct kind of object which, in a sense
“negates back,” and not merely in the manner of a prey that resists a
predator, but which can also, as he says “effect this negation in itself”; or,
come to be in the self-relation required by our desiring self-consciousness.
That is, Hegel introduces into the conditions of the “satisfaction” of any
self-relating another self-consciousness, an object that cannot merely be
destroyed or negated in the furtherance of life without the original self-
consciousness losing its confirming or satisfying moment. He then
identifies a further condition for this distinction that is perhaps the most
famous claim in the Phenomenology.
It is this one. “Self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another
self-consciousness.” (§175). He specifies this in an equally famous passage
from §178. “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself because and by way of
its existing in and for itself for an other; i.e., it exists only as recognized.”
So Hegel wants to introduce a fundamental complication in any
account of the self-relation he is trying to show is constitutive for
intentional consciousness and purposive deeds. As we have seen,

49
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

consciousness is said to be “beyond itself” because its self-relating self-

determining is always defeasible (or challengeable in the case of action)
and so its being in its very self-relation in some way “held open” to such a
possibility is considered a constitutive condition. In the broadest sense
this means that such takings and doings are supported by reasons, even if
mostly in deeply implicit and rarely challenged ways. (Conscious takings
can always “rise” to the level of explicit judgments and defenses of
judgments; habitual actions can be defended if necessary.) Hegel now
introduces the possibility—unavoidable given the way he has set things
up—that all such considerations are uniquely open to challenge by other
conscious, acting beings. Such challenges could initially be considered as
merely more natural obstacles in the way of desire-satisfaction in all the
various forms now at issue in Hegel’s account. But by considering
imaginatively the possibility of a challenge that forces the issue to the
extreme, a “struggle to the death,” Hegel tries to show how the unique
nature of such a challenge from another like-minded being forces the
issue of the normative (or not just naturally explicable) character of one’s
takings and practical commitments, and any possible response, to the
forefront. To be norm-sensitive at all is then shown to be not just open to
these unique sorts of challenges, but to be finally dependent on some
resolution of them. It is on the basis of this account, how we can be shown
to open ourselves to such challenges and such dependence just as a result
of a “phenomenological” consideration of the implications of the
apperception thesis, that Hegel begins his attempt to establish one of the
most ambitious claims of the Phenomenology of Spirit: the sociality of
consciousness and action.

So where does all this leave us? In general we have a picture of a self or
subject of experience and action estranged from, or divided within itself
(without, as he put it, a “unity” that “must become essential to it”) but
conceived now in a way very different from Plato’s divided soul, divided
among distinct “parts” in competition for rule of the soul as a whole, and
in a way very different both from other forms of metaphysical dualism,
and from what would become familiar as the Freudian mind, split
between the conscious and the distinct unconscious mind, or most explicitly

50
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

for Hegel (and for Schiller) in distinction from the Kantian conception of
noumenal and phenomenal selves. In a way somewhat similar to and in an
unacknowledged way, in debt to Rousseau, Hegel treats this division as a
result, not in any factual historical sense but as a disruption of natural
orectic unity that must always already have resulted, can only be rightly
understood as effected. This division functions in Hegel as it does in some
others as the source of the incessant desire not for rule or successful
repression but for the wholeness so often the subject of broader
philosophical reflections on human life. Hegel does not accept the
Platonic or Cartesian or Kantian account of a fixed dualism and so
entertains this aspiration for a genuine reconciliation of sorts within such
divisions. This is so in Hegel because he does not treat this division as a
matter of metaphysical fact. The problem of unity emerges not because of
any discovery of a matter-of-fact divided soul, but in the light of the
realization that what counts as an aspect of my agency and what an
impediment to it or what is a constraint on freedom, is a different issue
under different conditions. In this light, under the conditions Hegel
entertains in this chapter, the natural cycle of desire and satisfaction is
interrupted in a way for which there is not an immediate or natural
solution, and one’s status as subject, judger, agent, is now said to emerge,
in varying degrees, imagined under a variety of those possible conditions,
as a result of this putative unavoidable conflict. The premise for this
account is the one we saw much earlier. Hegel’s way of putting it was that
consciousness must always be thought to be “beyond itself”; more
expansively put: that we have to understand a human self-relation as
always also a projection outward as much as a turn inward. Once we
understand such a self-relation as a normative self-determination, such a
self is open, opens itself to, counter-claim, contestation, refusal, a different
form of negation that forces a different sort of response, what Hegel will
describe as initially a struggle for recognition.
This is a lot to get by reflection on Kant’s central idea, that “The ‘I think’
must be able to accompany all my representations,” but that is, I have
argued, Hegel’s source. It is this reflection on Kantian spontaneity,
understood by Hegel as also a self-dividing or self-alienating, that grounds
the hope for an effected or resultant form of reconciliation of self with
other, and thereby self with self.

51
 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

VI

Let me conclude with a return to Kant, now in a broader way. I have argued
that for Hegel self-consciousness is not the awareness of an object, at least
not any observed object, and that it is a dynamic process, a doing in a way
and a thinking in a way, not any momentary, second-order awareness.
Somewhat surprisingly, he called that whole process “desire” and I
suggested that this was because, looking at things this way, such a way of
knowing oneself in knowing or doing anything, not being momentary or
punctuated in time, must involve some projection over time, a way of
constantly and implicitly being attentive to, or at least open to the
possibility of, whether one had it right, either about what one believed to be
true, or about what one was doing or whether one had the reasons one took
oneself to have. This is, I think, the most important aperçus in what we call
German Idealism and it receives its fullest expression in Hegel’s thought.
(The formulation just used was closer to the way Fichte would put the point
in his discussion not of Begierde or desire but of Streben or striving in his
account of self-consciousness, or what he called a Tathandlung, a deed-
activity.) I can put the same point another way, and at a very high altitude,
by noting something unusual about Kant.
In what is known as the First Introduction to his last Critique, The
Critique of Judgment, Kant presented a very ambitious summary of his
understanding of the basic human capacities involved in our knowing,
doing, or feeling anything. He divided these capacities up into three com-
ponents, listing first what he called the basic “faculties of the mind,” and
then to each basic faculty, he assigned what he called a “higher cognitive
faculty,” something like the higher expression of such a faculty. So, to the
basic “cognitive faculty,” he assigned “understanding” as the higher faculty;
to the basic capacity to feel pleasure and pain he assigned as its higher
counterpart the faculty of judgment (as in aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic
judgment). And then, in a move somewhat at odds with the standard
picture of Kant’s philosophy, he listed as our third basic capacity “desire”
(Begehrungsvermögen) and assigned to it as the expression of its higher
cognitive faculty, “reason.”27

27
He also assigned to each “a priori principles.” These were, respectively, “lawfulness,
purposiveness, and obligation,”’ and to each he assigned a “product,” respectively:
“nature, art and morality.” Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Gesammelte Schriften, ed.

52
 ON HEGEL’S CLAIM THAT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

Why would he make such a connection? I want to say that it is because

for Kant reason is not a mere calculative faculty, as if a tool to be applied in
the realization of ends. Rather, in the simplest sense, to be a creature with
rational responsiveness is to be a creature that expects, demands, wants,
struggles for justification, warrant, a righteousness both intellectual and
moral; or, put another way, it is to feel a lack when such a justification is
lacking. In his most familiar formulation of the point, to be a creature of
reason is to be unable to rest content with knowledge of the mere
“conditioned,” but to seek to ascend always to knowledge of the “uncondi-
tioned.” (Kant noted that even the demonstration by his critical philosophy
that such knowledge was impossible would have no effect on such yearning
and the continuation of such quests. Indeed even the resolutely prosaic
Kant was inspired to use a variation of an erotic image: “We shall always
return to metaphysics as to a beloved one with whom we have had a
quarrel.” (A850/B878)) Reason, he put it in another context, must be said to
have its own “interests,” its own teleological structure clearly evident when
we act and know that we are acting in one way rather than another,
inspiring in all such cases the need for justification, especially to others (for
Kant, to all others). It was this structure that would provide the basis for
Kantian morality. One could put the point in the Hegelian terms framed
earlier: to be such a reason-responsive creature is to be self-related in this
erotic way in relation to all objects to be known and actions to be carried
out, to be, as Hegel said in his peculiar way, “beyond oneself.” And what
else is this sort of self-relation, so described—a striving, inability to rest
content, all in a uniquely reason-sensitive way—but “desire”?
This way of looking at things is the source of his most beautiful image for
this aspect of his project, an image that (typically) resonates both with
Christian and pagan undertones. (The image could be said to embody the
last moment of romantic optimism in German philosophy, although it had
a final materialist echo in Marx’s project.) Later in the PhG (§669), Hegel
describes human existence itself as a “wound” (“Wunde”), but one which,
he says, has been self-inflicted and which (one infers, which therefore) can
be healed, even “without scars” (“ohne Narben”).

Königlich-Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1922), vol. V,

198.

53
 The Self-Consciousness of Consciousness
WALTER JAESCHKE

The “history of self-consciousness” is the “history of self-consciousness.”

This sounds like a tautology, and from a formal point of view, it is one—
that is, if we abstract from the content and assume that “history of self-
consciousness” always means the same thing. In my view, however, we need
to note the difference between these two histories and to consider the
grounds for passing over from the first history to the second, and to
understand the second not only as a different form, but as the real and
effective history of self-consciousness. The history of self-consciousness in
the first sense can only refer to the form it took in the transcendental
philosophy of Fichte, and subsequently in the different version formulated
by Schelling; in the second sense—this should be no surprise, given the aim
of this lecture—it is carried out in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, on the
basis of a different self-consciousness, with a different method and a
different systematic function. First, I would like briefly to review this
background and sketch the difference between these two versions; then, in
the second part of my talk, I will explicate the new form that the process
that leads from consciousness to self-consciousness has taken in the
Phenomenology, with respect to its intellectual preconditions and its
systematic function; and finally, in the third part, I will pose the question of
how we should assess this concept of a “history of self-consciousness”
beyond its role in Hegel’s System of Science.

I. The transcendental-philosophical “history of self-consciousness”

The great, abiding achievement of transcendental philosophy is that it is has

pushed the I—or “self-consciousness,” as it has primarily been called since

55
 WALTER JAESCHKE

Schelling—to the center of philosophical questioning; not as a substance

that is, on its own, finished and without structure, but as a subject that is
activity, and is constituted through activity. The I to which we ascribe
knowledge and actions is based on actions—necessary yet unconscious
actions, which constitute consciousness in the first place. In his Grundlagen
der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Foundations of the Entire Science of
Knowledge)1 Fichte presents the “system” of these necessary actions. Since
this system forms the foundation of consciousness, it is not necessarily, and
not even primarily, contained in consciousness. But it can be made
conscious, raised into the sphere of “representation”—not of course via
introspection, but through transcendental-philosophical reflection. The
action that raises the complete system of necessary actions into conscious-
ness is however itself not a necessary action, but a free action—namely the
one that through an act of reflection presents these actions, in the Doctrine
of Science, in a systematically ordered fashion and raises them up to the
form of knowledge. This is however not an individual act, occurring at a
particular point in time, carried out by the singular individual, Fichte. For
him, the whole history of philosophy is rather nothing other than a
sequence of progressive attempts to raise that which lies at the foundation
of all consciousness, always and unchangingly, to consciousness, and to do
this in a free manner. These attempts have been increasingly successful:
human spirit “first begins to dawn via a blind groping about, and only out
of this does it pass over into daylight.” All philosophers “have sought to
separate out, through reflection, the necessary mode of action of human
spirit from its contingent conditions; and all of them have in fact, only with
more or less purity, and more or less completely, separated them out; on the
whole, the philosophizing power of judgment has however constantly
progressed and come closer to its goal.”2
In the vocabulary of the Critique of Pure Reason, this historically
progressing clarification of the mode of action of human spirit can be called
a “history of pure reason” (B 880)—that is, if one does not prefer to reserve
this provocative expression which joins “reason” and “history” for a more
particular version of the relation between reason and history than the one
we find in Fichte. The Doctrine of Science presents the “system of human

1
Where the author speaks of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, we will use “Doctrine of
Science.” Trans.
2
Fichte, Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Reinhard
Lauth (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1962–2012), vol. I/2, 140–143, 146. Henceforth: GA.

56
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

knowledge,” although this system precedes the Doctrine in the necessary

actions of spirit; the Doctrine must accordingly correspond to this
presupposition. The philosophers that propose this system are in this
respect “not the lawgivers of human spirit, but its historiographers;
certainly not journalists, but rather pragmatic writers of history” (GA I/2,
147). Their task is not to invent the system of human spirit, but to find and
describe it. Thus two different histories can be told here: on the one hand,
the history of the descriptions of knowledge made by these pragmatic
writers of history, on the other hand, the history of knowledge itself, the
writing of the very history of that which is described.
However, that which is presupposed by the historiographers of human
spirit is not something actually given; it first needs to be raised to the level
of consciousness—indeed, by consciousness itself. For this, no mere
description of something simply found will do, but rather a systematic
explication is required. The pragmatic writing of the history of human spirit
thus takes the form of a transcendental-philosophic reconstruction of the
necessary actions of consciousness. Here, the concept of history and the
concept of science coincide, concepts which until the end of the eighteenth
century and even in Kant3 were directly opposed: The history of human
spirit is its science, and this science assumes the character of a history of
human spirit—where history is however not to be understood in a previous
sense, as a report on an object that did not necessarily have a temporal
structure. The acts, always free, that describe the outlines of this system, are
located in the broader context of a history of reason which spans all of
time—but they also, every one of them, sketch a non-temporal history of
reason—or a history of self-consciousness, as Schelling, six years later,
would succinctly formulate it in the System of Transcendental Idealism.
In the context of this system, the history of self-consciousness acquires a
role that is central, although not clearly demarcated. Indeed, Schelling
understands the task of this System in the following sentence: “The whole
object of our inquiry is nothing but the explication of self-consciousness.”4
And this explication of self-consciousness is, for Schelling as well, not the
explication of a fixed substantial object from an external point of view; it is

3
Immanuel Kant, Akademieausgabe (Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Berlin, 1900f), vol. XX, 340–343.
4
Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus, in Historisch-kritische Ausgabe,
Werke, ed. Harald Korten & Paul Ziche (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2005), I, vol.
9/1, 152. Henceforth: AA.

57
 WALTER JAESCHKE

the description of a trend towards an “infinity of actions” of self-

consciousness and in this way it is a history of self-consciousness. However,
because an infinite history of self-consciousness would be necessary in
order to describe all these actions, Schelling is compelled to create an
abbreviated version of this history: “Philosophy can thus only enumerate
those actions which, in the history of self-consciousness, have constituted
epochs, and present them in their interrelation. [...] Philosophy is thus a
history of self-consciousness which has different epochs, and by which this
One absolute synthesis is successively composed.” (AA I / 9, 91)
The history of self-consciousness, which Schelling retells, is, to be sure,
the story of “actions”—but not of “deeds” or even, “experiences (Erlebnisse)
of self-consciousness.” It is the transcendental-philosophical history of the
genesis of self-consciousness, that is, the conditions under which the I first
comes to intuit itself: it is indeed the history of the progression of the self-
intuition of the I, but as a systematically complete enumeration of
“hierarchical series of intuitions” [...] through which the I raises itself to
consciousness to the highest potency” (AA I / 9, 25). Even in this very pithy
phrase, there is a decisive characteristic that does find expression: This
hierarchical series does not itself have a historical structure, but it is an
architectonically conceived, static order that is presented in the form of a
sequence only by the narrator. Schelling still uses the word “history” in the
traditionally subjective sense of “report,” “account,” not in the objective
sense of a development that occurs in time, which was not used so much at
that time. The “history” (Geschichte) being told by Schelling is not a
temporal sequence, but the “story” (Historie) of a hierarchically layered
order and of a functional coherence of the system of self-consciousness.
There is yet an additional aspect here: Even if “the whole of philosophy” is,
for Schelling, a “progressive history of self-consciousness,” as it were,
supported by monuments and documents (AA I / 9, 25), such “monuments
and documents” have no historical character. Therefore, Schelling also calls
this “history” an explanation of the “mechanism of the I”—without saying
anything else with this phrase than “history of self-consciousness.” To the
extent that Schelling’s history of self-consciousness unfolds in the three
“epochs,” it is an explanation of the “mechanism of the I,” though dressed
up in the vocabulary of a current of thought, that began to take hold
towards the end of the eighteenth century, against the previously dominant
rationalist current of thought and its concept of science.

58
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

On the other hand, the development from consciousness to self-

consciousness, and from reason to spirit, which Hegel outlines in his
Phenomenology of Spirit, is neither a hierarchical sequence of potencies, nor
a mechanism of the I, but a veritable history of self-consciousness—even
though he does not refer to it as such, presumably in order not to blur the
distinction between it and the transcendental-philosophical conception,
which, at the time, was occupied by talk of a history of self-consciousness.
This development is no longer a “science of the actions of the I,” but rather
a “science of the experience of consciousness,” and it is only that conscious-
ness which undergoes experiences whose constitution occurs behind its
back, and is to be reconstructed in a transcendental-philosophical fashion.
The writing of the history of human spirit, and also the pragmatic aspect of
the writing of its history, only begin where the transcendental-philosophical
frameworks have been superseded and human spirit is subjected to a history
in the temporal sense—or rather: where its development, which occurs
according to its own immanent laws, constitutes history as history
constituted. “The history of self-consciousness is the history of self-con-
sciousness”—this now means: The effective [wirkliche] “history of self-
consciousness” is not the “mechanisms” of its necessary actions that can be
reconstructed in a transcendental-philosophical way, but rather falls within
temporal history, or more precisely: it makes the temporal development
into a plurality of histories—to a history of self-consciousness in the narrow
sense as well as to the histories of reason and of spirit, which only in their
totality comprise all aspects of a history of consciousness. What “spirit” is
cannot be grasped without history—without history in the new, succinct
understanding of the word!—and this applies just as well to reason, and in a
rudimentary way, even to self-consciousness.
More important for Hegel than the transcendental-philosophical
reconstruction of the necessary actions of human spirit is the understanding
of the historical development of knowledge, the development of conscious-
ness into self-consciousness, and finally, the self-knowing of spirit. The shift
in point of view that he hereby enacts, also implies a criticism of the
orientation of the program that antedates this new approach: without the
reconstruction of the historical development of spirit, the transcendental-
philosophical work remains but a torso. For—to turn Kant’s famous phrase
against his own program—the historical development itself is part of the
conditions of possibility of knowledge as well as of the conditions of the
possibility for the objects of knowledge. If the insight that Hegel’s

59
 WALTER JAESCHKE

“phenomenology” rests upon is formulated in this way, then his program

can unproblematically become part of the program of a transcendental-
philosophical history of self-consciousness. And yet: Hegel’s insight does
not affect the core of the transcendental-philosophical program, yet it gives
it up, or at least downplays its importance, and instead it establishes a
successor program on a new terrain in a new form and with a new method.
The central point of dissent, the difference, although not between the
Fichte-Schellingean system, and the Hegelian, but the difference between
the Fichte-Schellingean transcendental philosophy and Hegelian
phenomenology lies precisely in this question: Does the history of self-
consciousness limit itself to the history of its invariant structure and the
successive synthesis of its functions, or is that which occurs a development
of self-consciousness which is historical in an emphatic sense? If we affirm
the latter, and have reason to assume not only a variation in knowledge of
the thing that is external and indifferent to it, but a historical development
in which, before anything else, all the series of necessary conditions of self-
awareness are traversed completely, then, this development concerns
necessarily also the conditions of possibility for knowledge and also the
objects of this knowledge—be it in the form of a moderate modification, or
in the form of a far-reaching, as it were, “substantial” displacements.

II. The Phenomenology as history of self-consciousness

The question presented in the first part of my talk cannot of course be

decided by choosing between Fichte and Schelling, on the one hand, and
Hegel, on the other. Today it is no less an explosive question, and the
answers given are no less momentous today than they were then—on the
contrary. Here, I will not yet be addressing these general issues, but will
remain with the Phenomenology of Spirit. Neither will I attempt to find an
answer to the question posed. In this second part, I would instead like to
sketch the outline of the program that follows from Hegel’s historical
insight. But, initially in the form of a small excursus, I would like throw out
the question of the genesis of this insight: When and how does Hegel come
to this insight that the history of self-consciousness—or generally: of
spirit—falls within time?
First a few words about “when”—in particular because this question
about the “when” will prove itself relevant with respect to content. The

60
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

history of the genesis of the Phenomenology of Spirit is shrouded in

mystery—so much so that in order to clarify the history, one would be
inclined to call upon the apocalyptic topos of the hidden book that only will
be revealed at the end of days. In fact, this obscurity is deepened rather than
cleared up by Hegel’s biographer Karl Rosenkranz. Rosenkranz does indeed
tell us that Hegel developed “the concept of experience which consciousness
makes of itself,” in his introductions to the Logic and Metaphysics, and that
“starting in 1804, the basis for the phenomenology” emerged from this.
Since the key manuscripts have been lost, these claims can no longer be
assessed, and, moreover, it is well known that Rosenkranz is never weaker
than in his chronology of Hegel’s writings. We have no direct statements
from Hegel or any third party. It is true that in a letter written in the early
summer of 1805, Hegel announces—obviously, somewhat optimistically—
that his system of philosophy was to appear as soon as the fall of that year—
but this does not provide any clues to the conception of a “phenom-
enology.” In the announcement for his lectures for the summer semester
1806, he has still not mentioned it; he only announces that his book System
of Science will soon appear and that he will use this as the basis of lectures
on speculative philosophy or logic. There is no mention of a “phenom-
enology”—and this, at a time when the typesetting of the introduction had
begun, and Hegel distributed the first galley proofs to his students. It is only
in the summer of 1806, in his lecture announcements for the winter
semester 1806/07, when substantial parts of the book already had been
typeset, that Hegel for the first and only time mentions “Phaenomenologia
mentis”—but here too he does not announce it is a separate publication, but
as something that would precede the first part of the “system of science.”
Even in the summer of 1806, he has still not grasped that instead of his
“system,” it would be only the “before” that would appear. During this very
summer 1806, this “before,” however, assumes such enormous proportions
that Hegel finally finds it advisable to indicate on the title page that it is the
first part of the system—which previously hadn’t been under consideration.
It comes as no surprise that this highly complicated situation
surrounding the genesis of the book has produced, in the last century, a
great number of interpretations based on the history of the book itself.
Here, I will not go into such questions, but only the conditions under which
Hegel reached his insight—which is decisive for the conception of the
Phenomenology—into the constitutive significance of the historical
dimension of knowledge. Since the sources remain doggedly silent, the

61
 WALTER JAESCHKE

question of the “how” cannot be solved by reference to them. All we can do

is attempt a post factum reconstruction of his motives—and for that reason,
I must step back and limit myself to two such motives, which, given the way
they are related to each other, are entirely applicable for the clarification of
the emergence of the new conception.
Reflections on this problem must start from what we know about Hegel’s
concept at the time of an introduction to a “system of the sciences”—and
what we know is not much. From all the years in Jena we only possess a
single, very fragmentary and sketchy introduction: the first sketch for a
system from the winter 1801/1802.5 It does not however provide us with a
possible paradigm for the later Jena conception of an introduction. It
ascribes this introductory function to a Logic still separated from the
Metaphysics, whereas at the time of the Phenomenology, Logic and Meta-
physics, understood as speculative philosophy, form the first, and proper,
part of the system. What is common to the earliest introduction and the one
that Hegel planned in 1806 is probably that he did not understand them as a
didactic guide, but as a “scientific introduction,” i.e., as a justification from
the point of view of the system. This is why he counters the accusation, if
not implausible then at least somewhat mean-spirited, of skepticism, and
that it would be impossible to ascend to the absolute of the Philosophy of
Identity on the ladder of earthly things,6 with the explicit assertion that the
individual rightly demands of science that it should “at least offer him the
ladder with which to reach this standpoint” (GW 9, 23)—and this is not just
a didactic ladder. Yet, to offer him this ladder also means to demand of him
that he should climb up on it and raise himself above his natural
consciousness. From the point of view of the genesis of the work, this
systematic task of the introduction, to offer the ladder to the individual, no
doubt has priority over the conception of a “phenomenology of spirit,” and
the question then becomes what prompted Hegel to present this ladder in
the form of a “phenomenology.”
For there is in fact a further piece of evidence that takes us closer to the
answer. Rosenkranz indeed says that Hegel had developed “the concept of
the experience that consciousness has of itself,” out of which “the seeds of

5
Hegel, Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), vol. 5, 257–265. Henceforth: GW.
6
Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Aphorismen über das Absolute, in Philosophisch-literarische
Streitsachen, ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1993), vol. 2/1, 337–355, citation
on 350.

62
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

the Phenomenology” had developed.7 “Science of the experience of

consciousness”—this is indeed the original intermediary title, subsequently
removed on Hegel’s instruction, which at the beginning of the book
separates the introduction from the first part of the system, which as a
whole in turn has the function of an introduction to the system. A “science
of the experience of consciousness” can however be adequate to the task of
introducing us to the “system of science” only if the thematic experience
that consciousness undergoes and has of itself leads to the threshold of the
system: only if the path of the experience of consciousness at the same time
is the path of becoming of science. The experience of consciousness must
then comprise nothing less than “the whole of its system, or the entire realm
of the truth of spirit” (GW 9, 61). But how should we more precisely
understand this “truth of spirit,” of which the introduction speaks? The
preface, which was written at a later stage, explains this more exactly: in
order to “lead the individual from his uneducated standpoint to knowledge”
we must “look at the general individual, the world spirit, in its formation”
(GW 9, 24). This later claim presupposes the insight that Hegel had gained
in the meantime, relating to the historical development of self-
consciousness: the insight that this history is not just the history of the
different ways self-consciousness can be described, but the history of its
formation—its own history. In order to reach a state of completion, a
history of self-consciousness must transcend the description of the
mechanism of the individual human spirit and look at world spirit in its
formation—which means: in its historical formation. To once more use the
earlier plastic image: a ladder, to be sure merely made up the rungs of
transcendental philosophy and only reaching as far as this philosophy,
would not be tall enough to take us all the way up to the self-consciousness
of spirit. It would at least need a historical extension, or better: it would
need to be replaced by a ladder that reaches much higher, and which is
constructed on the basis of a history of consciousness—this term however
now taken in a wholly new sense. Climbing this ladder would, for the
individual, then amount to, in a Heraclitean fashion, both a path of despair
and a path of elevation.
The conception of the Phenomenology, and precisely of its later and
shapeless parts, depends on this insight into the significance of the history

7
Karl Rosenkranz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Leben (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,
1844), 202, 214.

63
 WALTER JAESCHKE

of knowledge for knowledge itself, and into the significance of the historical
path of spirit, which Hegel understood in the summer of 1806. But is this
really an insight, or is it a grandiose mistake, which was to foster the
subsequent relativistic historicisms, to claim that the history of knowledge
not only has an additive or illustrative function, but is constitutive for
knowledge, and that it transforms and founds knowledge? Hegel’s intention
is not only to provide “a general philosophical history of human spirit or of
reason,”8 as his opponent Fries at the time accurately claimed. In such a
history, the various philosophical images that describe knowledge could
parade before us without changing anything in knowledge itself. And just as
little does Hegel want, in the manner of Fichte, to bring together in a grand
plan the various successive attempts to identify the invariant “true system”
of those actions that constitute the I, and that lies at the basis of all of
history. What he claims is rather that such a general philosophical history of
human spirit is itself a necessary precondition for the system of science,
since knowledge is itself historically formed—and this not in the sense of a
mere addition, a growth of knowledge, but as a qualitative transformation.
Given this assumption of a historically unfolding system of knowledge, the
differences between the previous attempts to gain knowledge of this system
can be easily explained: it is not a question of merely varying, more or less
successful, perhaps even progressing, and yet always failed presentations of
an invariant system, but of historically differing presentations of a system
which itself develops historically.
For Hegel the constitutive significance of the history of knowledge for
the shaping of knowledge depends on the specific structure of spirit, or
better: on the relation between individual and universal spirit, which is
specific to spirit as such. His insight into the historical development of
knowledge is founded on the premise of a philosophy of spirit. In the
general spirit, past knowledge of past existence has been sublated and
reduced to a moment; the individual participates in this “general spirit,” or
in Hegel’s words: “Past existence is an already acquired property of general
spirit, which constitutes the substance of the individual, or his inorganic
nature,” a nature of which the individual then in the process of his
formation takes possession and consumes—a process of formation through
which the “general spirit or substance gives itself its self-consciousness”

8
Walter Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch: Leben—Werk—Schule (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003),
col. 177b.

64
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

(GW 9, 25). We can translate this from a language that has become foreign
to us—and first into Hegel’s own later vocabulary: Hegel is here trying to
articulate ideas that he later, in his lectures on the history of philosophy—
and perhaps not even later, but even simultaneously—formulates as the idea
of “historicity.” The movement that spirit traverses on the way to its self-
consciousness is a historical movement. In this movement, that which the
individual self-consciousness holds to be true is transformed, and since self-
consciousness participates in this spirit and its movement, and takes
possession of its content as its heritage, both its knowledge of objects as well
as its knowledge of itself is marked by this history. “What we are,” he will
later say, “we are at the same time historically,” for the “common and
everlasting” in the history of thought (or in the language of the Phenom-
enology: the “substantial which belongs to the universal spirit”) is
“inseparably intertwined with the fact that we are historical.”9 As I have
noted, Hegel’s language can be translated into another language, where it
can be understood as the discovery of a particular quality of human
cognition, which makes processes of cultural learning possible.
Before coming back to this point, I would however like to pinpoint more
precisely the conditions of genesis, and the systematic place, of these ideas.
In Hegel’s philosophical milieu at the time, this idea is nowhere to be found:
we have to go all the way back to Herder to find something similar. Nor can
this insight into the historical movement of the substantiality of spirit be
found in Hegel’s own earlier work. And as far as we know, it does not stem
from the sphere of the problems relating to the introduction to the system—
they have at first no place there. It is rather due to Hegel’s elaboration of his
program for a philosophy of spirit from the middle of his Jena period.
Above all, we must take note of the fact that Hegel during that precise
semester which preceded his formulation of the new insight, for the first
time lectured on the history of philosophy. Even if we, apart from a few
fragmentary phrases, posses neither reliable sources nor second-hand
accounts, there can no doubt about the intertwining of these two domains.
We can still find traces of the language of the preface to the Phenomenology
in the manuscripts to Hegel’s lectures on the history of philosophy from
1823. Therefore it is not too hazardous to claim that the insight that lies at
the basis of the particular form of the introductory function ascribed to the

9
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, eds. Pierre Garniron & Walter
Jaeschke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994), I, 6.

65
 WALTER JAESCHKE

Phenomenology is due to Hegel’s study of the history of philosophy in the

winter of 1805 and 1806; in close connection with this, we should also
situate those parts of the philosophy of spirit from this semester, which deal
with the history of religion. All that was required to proceed from a “science
of the experience of consciousness” to a “science of the phenomenology of
spirit,” was the step from an insight into the particular nature of spirit,
which he had elaborated in his work on the history of philosophy, to a
general insight into the particular nature of spiritual processes—where the
concept of “appearing knowledge,” so frequent already in the earliest parts
of the work, in the introduction, formed an outstanding bridge.
With respect to the chronological coincidence of Hegel’s work on a new
conception of the introduction and on the philosophy of spirit, and
especially on the history of philosophy, the idea imposes itself that such an
introduction must provide a retrospective view of the historical elevation of
spirit. But perhaps this idea, in the very moment of its flashing forth, had
too much suggestive force. Can the task of providing an “introduction” to
the system—in the sense of a scientific justification—be said to be solved
with the retrospective view of “appearing knowledge,” or must this
retrospection take place under the guidance of well-defined precepts given
by “science”? Mere history would not be science in the emphatic sense, and
Hegel does not claim that the Phenomenology is a history, but a science—
albeit not a science in the same sense as the disciplines that follow it in the
“System of Science.” And yet: its scientific quality resides precisely in that it
presents this “path of natural consciousness, that pushes forth towards true
knowledge” (GW 9, 55) in an adequate way, and that it resolutely holds this
knowledge up to the eyes of a natural consciousness that wants to refuse it.
The becoming of knowledge is a necessary becoming, although not in the
sense of blind necessity, but of an immanent necessity of spirit. The
necessity required by the claim to science of the Phenomenology exclusively
lies in the adequate reconstruction of the inner lawfulness of the process of
knowledge that is presented. The negation of natural knowledge as well as
of the historical shapes of consciousness fall within this process: its
“negative” side, according to which it is a “path of despair,” as well as its
“positive” side, that it constitutes “the complete series of shapes” of spirit
(GW 9, 56f). The starting point and the ending point, as well as the
dynamics of this process of appearing knowledge, are purely determined
through the inner structure of knowledge. Its justification lies only in its
showing the historical movement to truly be the movement towards

66
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

science, and to culminate in “absolute knowledge.”10 There is no external

evidence that reason guides this process. No other proof can be given;
natural consciousness cannot be persuaded by arguments of a science that it
has rejected, but only by being shown the untruth of appearing knowledge,
and thereby the historical process of its own sublation.

III. A new epistemology

Hegel thus conceives the introduction to the System of Science—at least in

the later and more substantial parts—in the form of a genealogy. The
Phenomenology of Spirit is a genealogy of spirit, broken up into the histories
of self-consciousness, of reason, and of spirit. It displays the development of
appearing spirit; it is a “monstration,” but is not a “demonstration.” To
come back to the image of the ladder, which I have already used several
times: the ladder that the Phenomenology offers to natural knowledge, so
that it may ascend to absolute knowledge as the gateway to the system, is
just as much historical as it is scientific—and this is not coincidental, but
depends on the fact that history is nothing but the necessary path of the
development of spirit, the knowledge of which on the other hand is the
object of science. This is not meant to deny the constructive features of
above all this particular book. But what it contains of construction should
only serve the reconstruction of the historical unfolding of spirit itself.
Through this conception—which undoubtedly is in motion and not a
unity, but grew during the writing process and probably only emerged
during this process—Hegel gave a new solution to the problem of an
introduction to his philosophy, which was surprising when compared to his
firsts attempts, but also convincing, and not only when one looks back to
the earlier ones. The unity that is the basis of this solution was never
rejected by Hegel. It is not dependent on the introductory function, just as
this function is not dependent on the unity. If Hegel’s insight is correct, that
the spiritual world has a specific processual structure, through which spirit
can attain self-consciousness, and that consequently can be described as a
history of self-consciousness—namely as a history of the progressive
unfolding and substantial adaptation of knowledge and its formation, and

10
Walter Jaeschke, “Das absolute Wissen,” in Andreas Arndt & Ernst Müller (eds.),
Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes” heute (Berlin: Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, 2004),
194–214.

67
 WALTER JAESCHKE

that knowledge is raised to the level of self-knowing—if this insight is

correct, then an introduction to a system of philosophy must, strictly
speaking, have this form given to it by Hegel. This would appear in a
different light if, for instance, the already mentioned model that we find in
Fichte’s Doctrine of Science were correct, and the philosophical programs
would be related to each other like different descriptions of the always
identical system of actions of human spirit. In this case, an introduction to a
system in the form of a history of consciousness would only be a
kaleidoscopic mix without philosophical relevance. Here I will not decide in
favor of one of these—or even a third—model, but only stick to this: these
questions, which are not marginal, have only been discussed in philosophy,
and not only in philosophy, since Hegel’s program. Earlier conceptions like
Kant’s triad of dogmatism, skepticism, and criticism have on the other hand
only had marginal significance.
This is why the question of whether a history of consciousness is able to
function as an introduction to philosophy is only one way to approach the
problem. The other approach goes far beyond this context and beyond
Hegel’s idea of the system. With his new solution to the problem of an
introduction Hegel unwittingly posed a general problem, one that is
revolutionary and new, and has gigantic dimensions—a problem that can
also be pursued at a greater distance from Hegel’s systematic options and
ambitions, in fact can and ought to be pursued without any reference to
Hegel—and a problem that unfortunately even today is far from being
solved. In the third and concluding part of my talk I would like to address,
at least partially, this approach to the history of self-consciousness, which
abstracts from Hegel’s system—even if I can only briefly point to a few
tasks, without claiming to be exhaustive or to present a systematic view.
If—and I say this with emphasis—the historical changes in knowledge
are not only to be described as a constant change of the objects of know-
ledge, or as a quantitative expansion through inclusion of new content, but
also as a qualitative unfolding that transforms knowledge itself and
retrospectively also its constitution, then this must also have effects on an
epistemology that corresponds to the structure of a historically developing
knowledge: an epistemology that grasps the historical development of
knowledge. Given the conditions mentioned above, this is no mere question
of philosophical taste, but a compelling claim. Whoever is unwilling to be
subjected to this claim must reject this hypothesis as irrelevant. But also in
this context it must be tested again.

68
 THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In his far-reaching history of self-consciousness, there is one domain

that Hegel does not include—the domain that transcendental philosophy
places under the same rubric. This could be seen as in indication of the fact
that Hegel does not see the domain of necessary actions of spirit, the
mechanism of spirit, as subjected to history—just as, later, Hegel does not
present the forms of subjective spirit in the form of a history. The history of
consciousness does, as it were in a first act, contain a preceding history of
the genesis of individual consciousness, and then of its historical
adventures, but only the history that it traverses. But already the shaping of
forms of knowledge—intuition, understanding, reason—appears as a
historical sequence, in a process of the cultural development of cognition.
Here I will only refer to the capacity for making generalizations and
abstractions, of which there is good reason to assume that they do not
develop independently of spiritual and cultural conditions and achieve-
ments. Ludwig Feuerbach, who incidentally was also a passionate reader of
the Phenomenology, once pointed out that sensory intuition, even though it
appears to be the most simple and primitive form of knowledge, is the latest
one historically speaking—the latest one, since it presupposes that we have
achieved the high level of abstraction required to see a thing as a thing. And
Hegel indeed devotes a detailed chapter in his Phenomenology to this
domain of the thing. And yet it seems as if there would be more work to do
on the level of phylogenesis, whereas this has already been carried out with
respect to the analysis of analogous ontogenetic processes.
All questions relating to a categorical development of our interpretation
of the world are located in the same context. If that which Jacobi previously
had said is true, something that is today confirmed by cognitive science,11
i.e. that the causal interpretation of the processes of nature is not dependent
on our theoretical intuition of a connection between cause and effect, but is
mediated through our experience of our own actions, then we can ask how
much bearing this insight has on our causal, and in particular teleological
patterns of our understanding of the world—and furthermore, what this
means for a history of self-consciousness. But this is only one example out
of many—and it only relates to a first and basic domain. I need not
emphasize that comparable problems appear in the practical sphere, with
regard to the formation of our moral and legal ideas.

11
Michael Tomasell, Die kulturelle Entwicklung des menschlichen Denkens: Zur Evolution
der Kognition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006).

69
 WALTER JAESCHKE

As a second and far more complex domain, I would like to mention the
inner connection of the forms of objective and absolute spirit, to speak like
Hegel. This of course requires no laborious demonstrations, since we are
dealing with domains that are historically formed and continue to unfold in
history. And even if one concedes that this development in each case has an
immanent logic, they must still all be included in the history of self-
consciousness, or more precisely: the history of self-consciousness itself is
essentially the history of the objectification of self-consciousness in these
forms, even though they at the same time have substantial character for the
individual consciousness. In his Phenomenology, which in a surprising way
unifies so many processes that appear to be different, and in this produces a
convincing quality, Hegel has still isolated these processes and treated them
in succession—a decision that may be regrettable, but given that his
presentation is sufficiently complex as it is, was also a happy one. This
however does not change the fact that there is an unresolved problem for
future research hidden here. No one would claim that the partial histories of
these domains—language, law, science, art, religion, and finally philo-
sophy—have nothing in common. How they are connected, in our own or
other traditions; how they are related to an overarching history of
consciousness, whether and how they dovetail with one another, whether
and to what extent they presuppose one another and relate to other forms of
that society to whose life-world they belong—all of these are questions
posed by Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in the context of the problem of
an introduction, and which it also has attempted to answer partially,
undoubtedly with often insufficient means. They are surely not false
questions, and not questions that are only posed in the context of Hegel’s
philosophy, but questions that he brought up because they concern central
aspects of our understanding of our world and of ourselves—and yet we
cannot even say that two hundred years after the publication of the Phenom-
enology an adequate framework of questioning for the revival of these themes
exists. Perhaps we could take the two hundred year jubilee of the Phenom-
enology as the occasion to take up once more the problems it posed.

Translated by Brian Manning Delaney and Sven-Olov Wallenstein.

70
 Absolute Knowledge
Why Philosophy is its Own Time Grasped in Thought
TERRY PINKARD

Hegel says both that his philosophy is the contemplation of eternal truths
and that all philosophy “is its own time grasped in thought.” Needless to
say, how one harmonizes those two claims has been the subject of much,
and mutually exclusionary, commentary. What I want to argue here is that
this harmonization is the central thesis of the concluding chapter of the
1807 Phenomenology titled “Absolute Knowledge” (at least in most of the
important ways), and that this tells us something important both about this
chapter in particular and about Hegel’s thought in general.
Like the introduction, the “Absolute Knowledge” chapter is very short,
unlike most of the chapters in the rest of the book. Almost immediately
after introducing that section, Hegel tells us that what is at stake here is the
“infinite judgment” (what he had earlier just as obscurely called the
“speculative proposition”). Such a judgment would be one about what Kant
had called the “unconditioned,” which, as we know from the very first
sentence of the first Critique, is the kind of subject matter with which
human reason is burdened and about which it is forever doomed to raise
“questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not
able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to
answer.”1 Now, up until the last chapter, it has been precisely this
“unconditioned” which has been the “object” that is being examined at each
stage of the Phenomenology. For example, as any reader knows, the
Phenomenology begins with an examination of “sense-certainty” and
quickly finds, just as Kant said it would, that when it goes beyond the
otherwise unproblematic experience of sense-certainty and asserts an un-

1
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan, 1929), A vii.

71
 TERRY PINKARD

conditioned status for it (that is, asserts it as a fully self-sufficient status), it

finds itself embroiled in various contradictions, and since reason cannot
rest in a contradictory state, in order to avoid the contradiction, reason
finds it has thereby landed itself in the position of asserting something very
different than what it first thought it was asserting. The first “infinite
judgment” was that sense-certainty has no conditions outside of itself—that
sense-certainty is, in the language Schelling and Hegel chose to adopt, the
“absolute.” However, that “infinite judgment” proved itself to be—as an
infinite judgment—false. All the other objects that are investigated in the
Phenomenology are other candidates for being the “absolute,” and each of
them is supposedly generated by some kind of logic that propels one from the
failure of one of them to achieve that status to the assertion of the next one.
Thus, just as, by Hegel’s lights, Kant had genuinely shown that reason is
led to the assertion of antinomies when it goes beyond experience and
makes judgments about the unconditioned, so too Hegel wants to argue
that when we take some finite, limited sphere of experience to be the
unconditioned (to be, to use the language of Kant that Hegel adopted for his
own use, “the in-itself”), then we too end up in something like the Kantian
antinomies. Only the “in-itself” would be the true, that is, would be free
from the kinds of contradictory burdens that weigh on all conditioned
attempts at reaching the unconditioned. Because of this, so Hegel argues,
the logic of these kind of failures at first provokes us into asserting that the
“object” of our investigations is, as something taken to be the uncon-
ditioned, something like an “absolute essence,” something which lies behind
appearance and which manifests itself to us only in a partial way, and our
grasp of which is therefore itself also only partial and faulty. (The terms,
“absolute essence,” first appears in the introduction and the “Conscious-
ness” section of the book.) However, the phrase “absolute essence” does not
appear in “Absolute Knowledge.” Why?
The first thing to note about all the objects under study in the Phenom-
enology (prior to the last chapter) is that they exhibit contradictions only
when a kind of reflection enters the picture, that is, only when, to cite Kant’s
lines once again, reason raises “questions which […] it is not able to ignore,
but which […] it is also not able to answer.” What the investigations of
these initial objects of examination—from sense-certainty to the various
forms of spirit and religion—seem to show us are reason’s limits, that is,
they seem to show us the points at which reason runs out and something
else seems the most likely candidate to enter the picture. The limit of

72
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

something is, of course, the point at which something ceases to be what it is

and becomes something else, or the point at which something runs out, and
one moves from it to another thing.2 Hegel’s useful term for this is
“negativity”: The negative of something is its limit, what demarcates it from
something else, that is, the point where it ceases to be what it is or where it
ceases to exercise the authority it otherwise has.3 Indeed, we could say with
Hegel that it is the negativity of the initial objects themselves in the (at first)
naïve assertion of their status as the unconditioned that pushes us to such
self-undermining reflection in the first place.4
Novalis, as is well known, ironically quipped that whereas we everywhere
seek the unconditioned, das Unbedingte, all we find are things (Dinge). As a
quip, that fairly well sums up a big chunk of the first part of the
Phenomenology. By the time we have been pushed to take, variously, not
just “things” but maybe “reason” itself—as a Kantian might insist, in its
“transcendental employment”—or where we take even more generally
“spirit” in one of its historical shapes, or even “religion” in one of its
historical shapes as the “unconditioned,” we are left at the end schematically
with two different “infinite judgments.” The first is that “the being of the I is
a thing”5 Especially given the success of the sciences in the modern world,
this perhaps needs no further motivation; if we apply reason to the study of
“things,” we will find that more and more, the naturalist stance—very
roughly, that all explanation is causal, and that the natural sciences are the
best suited vehicles for producing such causal explanations—looks like the
most promising attitude to take. The quick objection that this ignores the
normativity at work in such naturalist explanations is of course itself
quickly parried by extending naturalism to the social sciences; there may

2
Thus, if Kant was correct about the limits of reason, then it would indeed have made
sense for him to have said that in showing reason’s limits, he had made room for faith
(or, to put it in the Schellingian idiom, to have made room for intellectual intuition.)
3
This rather quick characterization of negativity conflates, as I think was Hegel’s
intention, two different senses of negativity, a descriptive sense and a normative sense; it
is part of Hegel’s complex claim that the descriptive sense depends on the normative
sense, even if that is not immediately apparent. That is a topic for a longer discussion.
4
This is ultimately to push us into a concept of self-relating negativity, that is, the kind of
normative self-distinction that subjects carry out and which is the presupposition of
marking out all the other kinds of negativity. Part of Hegel’s enterprise is to show us that
the kind of negativity involved in, as it were, descriptively distinguishing things from
each other impels us to acknowledge a kind of normative negativity at work in that first
activity.
5
§790. References to the Phenomenology of Spirit are to my own translation, available at
http://web.me.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html.

73
 TERRY PINKARD

indeed be science, but there is also “science studies” where we learn just
how contingent any of the procedures and methods of practicing scientists
have been (and still are). Generalized to an even greater degree, the social
science thesis can be put in this form: Any “shape of consciousness” can be
grasped as a “thing,” that is, as something obeying merely positive, socially
established rules.6 Pushed to its conclusion, this form of infinite judgment
finally ends up in more or less sophisticated versions of psychologism or
“sociologism” of some sort, something that the post-Hegelian nineteenth
century saw proliferate. However, this defeats itself as a statement of the
unconditioned, since it basically says that the unconditioned is itself
conditioned; no matter how sophisticated it gets, it still runs up against the
really rudimentary objection that its own truth claims are themselves
merely the product of following positive rules and yet also carry within
themselves the sense that they are more than that. Both Frege’s and
Husserl’s loud protests against the psychologism of their day were in effect
protests against such a view, namely, that the “infinite judgment” really
could be that “the being of the I is a thing.”7
In the very next paragraph after introducing that particular candidate for
the “infinite judgment,” Hegel gives us a statement of something close to
subjective idealism, namely, the opposing infinite judgment to the effect
that “the thing is the I.”8 If all we encounter in our search for the
unconditioned is “things,” then it seems that the unconditioned must itself
be a statement of what “reason” ultimately requires, which is itself a require-
ment imposed by us on things. This amounts to the claim that whatever
normative force things turn out to have itself ultimately has to do with their
relation to humans. On this view, nature as the object of “observing reason”
becomes disenchanted, and that amounts to saying that nature (“things”)
has no meaning except in relation to humans, to “subjects” (that is, to the
“I”). It would not be too much of a stretch to see this rather anachron-
istically as Hegel’s own statement of a kind of crude pragmatism—or as the
parody of pragmatism that likes to say that truth is simply what “works” for
us. Hegel does indeed have his own stand-in for that kind crude pragma-

6
See ibid.
7
Frege would of course howl even more loudly about being associated with any
philosophy that took the “I” as playing some kind of pivotal role in normative accounts.
Frege was far more impressed with the idea of the normative being beyond the realm of
the merely psychological.
8
§791.

74
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

tism—what in the Phenomenology he calls “utility,” namely, the view that

whatever meaning things have for us is to be determined by their utility for
us, such that even the value of truth in science is supposedly only a utility
“for us.” On that view, “we” set the standards, and we compel things to live
up to them.9 On the terms of that “infinite judgment,” what things are
depends on how “we” cut the world up, and that depends ultimately on
“our” interests.
In these closing sections, it is clear that that Hegel thinks that neither of
the two mutually exclusive “infinite judgments” is on its own true, and it is
also equally clear that one cannot simply combine both. However, each
represents a distinct line of thought to which one is led when one reflects on
what it is to claim to know something or to be committed to something;
each represents, that is, another specific turn in the dialectic, that is, in the
attempt to grasp the “unconditioned.” To escape from the “either/or” of
these two “infinite judgments,” Hegel proposes what he calls a “recon-
ciliation” of spirit with itself, although it is at first at least a little unclear as
to just what this reconciliation is supposed to be—whether it really is
something that carries the full theological overtones of Versöhnung or
whether it is merely another metaphysical or logical move in the system.
In this respect, Hegel notes in the next paragraph10 that action is the first
division of what he calls the “simplicity of the concept.” (This is surely not
merely a nod to Goethe’s well known statement in Faust that in the
beginning, there was not the word but the deed11; it most likely nods even
more deeply to Hölderlin’s claim that the original act is that of a primordial
division of subject and object.) From out of that original division, he notes,
a “return”—apparently, to a unity that replicates in some form the so-called
simplicity of the concept—is supposed to be staged.
To make this point and explicate it, Hegel refers back to the way he has
staged the final confrontation of the “Spirit” chapter as two “beautiful souls”
confronting each other. The confrontation is between two agents who have
each reached the point where each takes for granted that the only grasp
reason has of “the unconditioned” consists in the demands of practical

9
Or, as Kant so typically put it, philosophers have “learned that reason has insight only
into that which it produces after a plan of its own, and that it must not allow itself to be
kept, as it were, in nature’s leading-strings, but must itself show the way with principles
of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer to questions of
reason’s own determining.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xiii.
10
§793.
11
“Im Anfang war die Tat.”

75
 TERRY PINKARD

reason to be bound by the unconditional duty to act in terms of an

unconditional moral command. This requires on the part of each agent an
attempt at an inner purity—a willingness to submit all one’s maxims to the
unyielding demands of something like the categorical imperative—which is
potentially at odds with the other contingent features of one’s life (one’s
needs, desires, personal commitments and the contingency of the world in
which such actions are realized). The problem confronting them is then
itself framed in terms of the kind of self-consciousness in which during and
after the eighteenth century “we” found ourselves enmeshed, namely, that
“we” are now acutely aware of the finitude, or contingency, of our
standards—one thinks in particular of Hume’s challenge to the traditional
views on the matter—and of the equal necessity of justification of those
standards. Put more generally: The philosophical confrontation between
Kant and Hume—put even more generally: whether there are any
categorical imperatives or only hypothetical imperatives—was itself
anchored in a social and existential worry about whether there was in fact
any grasp of the “unconditioned” at all—a worry which played itself out in
very concrete religious and moral disputes. If, to put it in terms of Kant’s
response to Hume, the only “unconditioned” of which we can get any grasp
is that which practical reason offers us in the form of pure duty, and if
therefore the only true justification we can have is either that of
transcendental philosophy—i.e., Kant and/or Fichte—in the theoretical
realm and that of adherence to pure duty in the practical realm, then the
issue is how agents who take this to be the unconditioned are entitled to
deal with each other.
This confrontation is thus an exhibition—a Darstellung, as Hegel would
have it—of Hegel’s more general and ambitious thesis about the nature of
conceptual content: The meaning of a concept cannot be fully (or
“concretely”) determined until one sees how it is put into practice or
“realized” over time.12 Hegel rejects the idea that concepts can have a
determinate meaning that can be specified independently of their use in
practices, and this thesis is itself part of Hegel’s transformation of the
Aristotelian metaphysics of the actualization of a substance’s potentialities
into a philosophy of a different sort—a dialectical social and historical
theory of meanings as historically and socially realized in the practices in

12
Hegel respectively calls this the “Ausführung” and the “Verwirklichung” (sometimes
“Realisierung”) in the Phenomenology.

76
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

which they find their homes. In turn, this means that understanding
concepts cannot be a matter of specifying the meaning of concepts and then
looking for the applications of the meaning; on the Hegelian account, the
way in which the general concept is particularized makes a difference to the
content of the general concept itself. In the Phenomenology, this thesis is
not, as it were, independently argued; instead, Hegel constructs the various
accounts in that book as exhibitions of this thesis about conceptual content.
As one moves from putative grasps of the “unconditioned” which, as Kant
claimed, display contradictoriness in themselves—from the object of sense-
certainty as failing to exhibit itself as an adequate account of the
unconditioned in light of its contradictory character, all the way to other
such accounts, such as the contradictions implicit in taking “the thing that
matters,” die Sache selbst as “the unconditioned”—one comes to see that
there simply is no practice-independent, or “realization-independent,”
grasp of conceptual meaning.13 As it were, meaning cannot be established
apart from use, but meaning is not reducible to use.
The confrontation between the two beautiful souls is thus the existential
enactment of a more general theory of conceptual content that has been in
the process of development throughout the entire Phenomenology. Each
agent experiences the tension between his own individual desires and
commitments. Each sees that his only grasp of the unconditioned is, as it
were, his purity of heart, his own unconditional assent to submit all of his
maxims to the test of the moral law. Each thus finds himself in the same
position as the other, as each of the two beautiful souls is in effect the
authority-conferring self—or, in a less orthodox Kantian mode, is the self
who submits himself to the unconditional authority of reason—but who is
equally as well a contingent, situated self who seeks to establish just what
that authority requires. Each is, moreover, convinced that, since it is the
authority of reason itself to which one is submitting, each has within
himself all the resources necessary for determining just what it is that
impersonal reason requires. Given that setting, the enactment quickly splits
into two different understandings of what unconditional duty requires, a

13
This thesis about conceptual content does become more and more a feature of explicit
argumentation as Hegel develops his thoughts in his later works and lectures. The
Phenomenology is, in his own words, simply the “ladder” one climbs to attain the kind
of high-altitude vantage point at which the thesis begins to appear. The Encyclopedia is
Hegel’s more explicit set of arguments for this thesis; it remains a matter of dispute,
however, whether the Phenomenology’s manner of Darstellung is more persuasive than
the more systematic arguments of the Encyclopedia.

77
 TERRY PINKARD

split which itself stems from two different understandings of what moral
judgment requires in the conditions of the acceptance of unconditional
duty. Each makes a judgment as to what it required of him; one agent sees
the purity of his motive as preserved in his actions despite the contingency
of their realization (that is, he sees that irrespective of how his deeds might
appear to others or what shape they might take in the world of contingency,
the purity of his motive remains intact); the other agent sees the purity of
his motive as lying solely in his capacity for moral judgment itself and not in
action at all. One thus acts and takes this to preserve the beauty of his soul,
provided he adopt something like an ironic stance toward his actions (or,
more likely, to the consequences of those actions, matters of which he is not
fully in control); the other does not act and takes the beauty of his soul to be
evidenced by his refusal to sully himself with the impurity of the world.
Ultimately, each comes to see himself in the other as each comes to admit
that in Kant’s terms, he is radically evil, that is, each comes to understand
that he cannot easily pry apart the contingency of his own situated
perspective (and thus his own individuality, or “self-love”) and his demand
for a unconditional justification of his actions. Without this acknow-
ledgement on the part of each that both have reason to suspect the other of
dissembling, of hypocrisy, or of saying and doing what he does out of
merely strategic considerations, and without this acknowledgement
becoming mutual, this kind of push toward moralism becomes unlivable
since it imposes demands for purity that cannot be acknowledged by the
other. This awareness of the identity of each within a larger whole in turn
leads each of them to forgive the other, since neither was, as it were, without
sin (i.e., without Kantian radical evil); it is in that way that the dialectic of
beautiful souls is the existential enactment of the conceptual dialectic
between the unconditional demands of reason and our contingent
situatedness. Such an enactment precedes the conceptual grasp of what has
been enacted. (The owl of Minerva, we also know, only flies at dusk.)
As Hegel phrases it, “this unification has in itself already come to pass”
and that what is still lacking is only “the simple unity of the concept,” the
conceptual comprehension of just what it is to which our form of life has
already given voice.14 At first, as he puts it, this is expressed in religious
terms, as the reconciliation “in God” that is carried out through the acts of
mutual forgiveness. However, this is only a resolution in what Hegel

14
§795.

78
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

diagnoses as a case of “representational thought”; we “picture” an entity

which both stands outside of us and within us and which serves as the
whole within which we hold together what seems like an insurmountable
contradiction (between our intended ascent to a timeless realm of reasons—
the concept in “its eternal essence”—and our existence in a conditioned,
contingent historical world—“the concept which exists there, that is, which
acts”).15
Once that has been grasped as the problem, then, as Hegel says, our “sole
contribution here is in part to gather together the individual moments” into
a statement of how to combine a focus on the history of spirit, of our own
mindedness, while at the same time managing “to cling to the concept in
the form of the concept.”16 It is this which requires us to look at the last
contingent shape of knowledge, namely, “absolute knowledge.”
What is that shape? Hegel’s initial statement of it cannot help but be
puzzling. “Spirit is,” he says, “science.”17 Perplexing as that may look at first,
it is an integral part of Hegel’s claim which has to do with how the develop-
ment to absolute knowledge is itself the result of the logic of modernity’s
inward turn in life—of spirit as an in-sich-gehen—which has for its
penultimate philosophical expression Kant’s switching the topic from
reason’s knowledge of objects (metaphysics) to reason’s knowledge of itself
(the critical philosophy). It is this which Hegel explains in noting that it is
the modern world itself that is thus conceived in the spirit of “science.”
Science, as the rigorous, theoretical pursuit of knowledge becomes the new
watchword—that is, the mark of a world of “experts” instead of the world of
“noblemen” it has replaced—and this is the spirit which “knows what it
is.”18 (Indeed, it is Hegel’s all too trusting faith in the experts and the
bureaucracy they inhabit which made him an legitimate object of suspicion
for later people such as Adorno). This form of life thus is in the process of
becoming a “knowing substance” as it is put into practice in the developing
institutions of modern life (such as modern families, careers open to talent,
constitutional states, universities organized around the union of teaching
and research, and so forth), and it is the development of those institutions
and practices which have preceded its own self-conscious realization within

15
§796: “der aber sein ewiges Wesen aufgibt, da ist, oder handelt.”
16
§797.
17
§799.
18
§800.

79
 TERRY PINKARD

modern philosophy that this is indeed exactly what it is.19 (To put it another
way: The revolutions of modernity—scientific and political, among others—
have preceded its philosophical grasp of itself.20) Thus, time itself becomes
the “intuited concept”; we affirm the temporality of concepts (that is, their
historicity) without at the same time giving up on the necessity to give them
a rational, “scientific” justification and development.21
For philosophy to grasp its own time, it must therefore have grasped the
idea that “that nothing is known that is not in experience, or, as it can be
otherwise expressed, nothing is known that is not available as felt truth.”22
That is, it grasps its substance (i.e., its form of life in terms of what
unconditionally counts for it and which enters into it as a set of dispos-
itions, a “second nature”) as historically developing and temporally situated.
For that form of life, out of what looked like sheer contingency (the chaos of
history) or out of what looked like something determined by some set of
natural laws (which we cannot ever get quite right) there turns out to have
been, retrospectively seen, a purpose, which was never intended at any step
along the way. History has a direction that exhibits Kant’s conception of
purposiveness without a purpose; the purpose emerges only after the fact,
after we have found out in practice what it was that we had meant all along.
This purpose, as we might say, itself develops out of the practice of giving
and asking for reasons, which itself points us in the direction of truth-
seeking; the practice of giving and asking for reasons itself involves an
implicit self-consciousness, a stance from which one can criticize the norms
of the practice, and when one begins to work out that form of self-
consciousness, one finds oneself taking a reflective, inward turn. One finds
that what one meant is that the “I think” can accompany all my
representations, that is, that I can see all my conceptions, no matter how

19
§801.
20
Hegel makes the further claim (§801) that in its initial development, this modern
substance is such that it invites a kind of “sense-certainty” reading of itself (as
understanding itself as part of “science”). Modern skepticism, we might say, is the
“positive” moment of this movement. (§801).
21
§801. This is to take to its logical conclusion—at least in Hegel’s Logic—Kant’s
admonition that we fall into error when we seek to go beyond the bounds of possible
experience; it merely takes Kant’s claim one step further into making our own
situatedness and contingency itself a condition of possible experience, something Kant
had already implicitly formulated in his conception of “radical evil,” that as moral
agents, we are also situated individuals who strive to attain the unconditioned stand-
point of pure duty but who can never be sure that they have succeeded.
22
§802.

80
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

entrenched they may be, as possibly only my own—and therefore possibly

not true—conceptions.
That this begins to come to its culmination in a “scientific world” whose
logic impels itself to reflect about itself and increasingly to make that kind
of reflection integral to its own picture of itself means that this development
ceases to be an exclusively European movement and must instead happen as
the development of the world spirit, that is, of “universal humanity” (a
conception that Hegel, at least in the Phenomenology, claims originates first
with the Greeks).23 It is thus not merely the expression of a particular “spirit
of a time” or even what is nowadays rather emptily called “a culture”; it is
the expression of a spirit, the scientific spirit, which properly is possible for
all and which genuinely belongs to all. It also follows—although Hegel
himself is, shall we say, more than merely reluctant to draw this
conclusion—that this new spirit must understand its very own historical
situatedness and realize that it too is in something similar to the situation in
which the two beautiful souls had landed themselves. The French
Revolution had already given one voice to this by eschewing talk of
traditional rights and instead proclaiming the rights of man, and even
though religion (i.e., Christianity) has long proclaimed that God loves all
equally, spirit had until 1789 not yet fully reached the point where it had
fully grasped that this is the result of putting certain concepts into practice;
up until “absolute knowledge,” spirit was thus only a collection of “national
spirits” and not yet the “world spirit.”24 However, now—that is, somewhere
around the last half of the chapter on absolute knowledge—we have a spirit
which, although in the process of grasping itself in its universality, is still
alienated from itself, and which, if it is to fully grasp itself, that is, to become
fully self-conscious, must come to terms with its own alienation.
This type of reflection is identified by Hegel by a paragraph later as
“absolute negativity,” a term first introduced in the Phenomenology
virtually in passing in the “Self-Consciousness” chapter.25 The negative of
something is, as we noted, its limit, the point at which it ceases to be what it
is or where a norm has the limits to its authority. In this Hegelian jargon,
“things” in the most general sense have their “negativity” in something else;

23
§727.
24
§802. This nicely mirrors Goethe’s remark to Eckermann that the age of “world
literature” is now upon us and that it is incumbent on us, now that we have grasped that,
to hasten its arrival.
25
§803.

81
 TERRY PINKARD

what something is will be a function of what it is not. Originally, in the

“Self-Consciousness” chapter, Hegel argued that initially the confrontation
between the two agents who are each seeking recognition resulted in a
relation of mastery and servitude, which it at first treated simply as a social
fact—to the effect that the limits of the servant’s authority over his life are
set externally to him, by the master—but which, as emerging from of the
common point of view generated by these relations, becomes something
that is no so much merely factual (and thus based on relations of power and
interest) and instead more normative, and which offers the prospect of a
kind of freedom that would itself be a self-limitation, not a factual limitation
by an other—ultimately a self-limitation compatible with limitation by an
other. This would be not merely “finite” but absolute negativity as a type of
self-limitation. From the kind of self-reflection captured in Fichte’s
deliberately provocative slogan of “I = I,” the agent who in reflecting on
himself as a contingent individual, a product of his time, is now called upon
to grasp itself as the “absolute distinction.” This is, as Hegel puts it,
originally the “immediate unity of thought and being” as the thought of
“thought’s relation to what is the case.”26 The point is that this kind of
hyper-reflection, so characteristic of modernity, is itself both the expression
of and is made possible by certain types of institutions and practices within
modern life; it is thus “contingent” on that world coming into being, on
what Hegel calls the “actual history” of spirit’s development.27
The enacted failures of attempts at self-limitation, both individually and
collectively, have led to the impasse between the two putative “infinite
judgments” with which the chapter begins. That impasse is set aside when
the genuine “infinite judgment” about the way in which the period of the
book’s genesis understands itself as a historical period that attempts to
grasps itself timelessly as a contingent historical period; in doing so, it
“becomes historical.” Hegel thus concludes that in doing so, in creating
such a “scientific world,” spirit has “won” for itself its concept, that is, has
brought to a close its movement insofar as that movement is seen as
culminating in the world of a “scientific” form of life. What remains to be
shown is the logic of this movement, which up to this point has been
exhibited but not yet constructed on its own.28

26
§803.
27
That this whole section amounts to establishing the normatively self-limiting nature of
freedom is made apparent, I would argue, in ibid., §§788, 799.
28
§804.

82
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

Thus, in the second from the last paragraph, Hegel says that “science
contains within itself the necessity to empty itself of the form of the pure
concept and to make the transition from the concept into consciousness,”
which amounts, as he notes, to the idea that “knowing is acquainted not
merely with itself, but also with the negative of itself, that is, its limit.”29 This
is the genuine “infinite judgment,” itself a more determinate statement of
the idea that the content of the “universal” is itself not independent of how
it is actualized, put into practice. To say that this “knowledge is of its own
limit” is also another way of stating that its philosophy can be nothing other
than its own time grasped in thoughts.
In the final paragraph, Hegel notes that this grasp of itself as contingent,
as the result of an “actual history” that now understands itself as historical,
is something like a “gallery of pictures,” and its activity can only be that of a
kind of “recollection” of where it has been.30 This new “scientific” world is
thus, once again, a form of life that starts over again as if it had no past, or
as if its unprecedented life had nothing to learn from its recollection of
where it had come from; its view of its own history is that of a “gallery of
pictures,” merely of what has come before but now is no more. However,
our grasp of it—“our grasp” as that of those who have just finished reading
the book—is not itself merely a piece of historical knowledge but is
something new, namely, philosophical history, the “science of phenomenal
knowledge,” that is, “begriffne Geschichte,” history comprehended in terms
of what has been meant. This in turn means that Hegel’s conception of
absolute knowledge and of philosophical history is not, as it has almost
always been taken to be, a teleological view of history at all (at least strictly
speaking). Instead, history turns out to be a case of, as we noted,
purposiveness without a purpose, the kind of purposiveness Kant restricted
to organisms and to the experience of beauty. For something to be
explained teleologically in the strict sense, the explanation must explain
some activity in terms of the end at which the activity was aimed. Individual
actions and even some collective actions thus are paradigm cases where
such teleological explanation is at home. However, the history of spirit
exhibits no such teleology in that sense; spirit had no purpose in mind as it
worked itself out. Instead of there being such a direct teleology at work,
there is instead a kind of logic that impels itself from one position to another

29
§806.
30
§808; the image of the gallery is not new to Hegel; Novalis, for example, noted that
“anecdotal history” could be seen as a “gallery of actions.”

83
 TERRY PINKARD

and which eventually exhausts its possibilities in the comprehension of itself

as “absolute knowing.” This logic has both a direction and an end-point, but
it is not making its moves in order to reach that end-point. Nonetheless,
having reached it, it now sees where its culmination lies, namely, in the
logic of a form of life that takes freedom as self-direction to be its “infinite,”
that is, where the conceptual is “unbounded.” This in turn means that it
must understand itself, to use Robert Pippin’s term, as “unending
modernity,” the continual dissatisfaction of a life that continually submits
everything to criticism, although, as the pragmatists like to put it, not the
whole all at once.31
Hegel speaks of a goal (Ziel) here, but that goal is, oddly enough, the
timeless grasp of our own contingency.32 Both Robert Pippin and John
McCumber have each noted the oddity of Hegel’s ending with misquoted
lines from Schiller instead of his own words.33 Without the “comprehended
history,” (the begriffne Geschichte) of the Phenomenology, the figure of
“absolute knowledge” would, Hegel says, be “lifeless and alone.” Philosophy,
as grasping its own time in thought, would be empty and relatively
meaningless if it were to divorce itself from its history or from art and religion
(which is not to say that philosophy without religion is not possible, merely
that philosophy must comprehend what it was that religion was always
inadequately trying to say). At best, philosophy without its history would be
only a formal enterprise rearranging the pieces of the “infinite judgments” of
its own time into something like more perspicuous structures and bringing
out the oppositions inherent in them (as in fact much academic philosophy
does). What motivates and empowers the standpoint of absolute knowledge is
its sublation of these other modes of seeking the unconditioned, and it exists

31
Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of
European High Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991). That Hegel’s own views of
modernity as continually up for grabs, although not all at once, is similar to the stance
attributed to American Pragmatism is not itself accidental.
32
§808: “This revelation is thereby the sublation of its depth, that is, its extension, the
negativity of this I existing-within-itself, which is its self-emptying, that is, its
substance—and is its time.”
33
Robert Pippin, paper given at Eastern APA, 2008; John McCumber, “Writing Down
(Up) the Truth: Hegel and Schiller at the End of the Phenomenology of Spirit,” in R. A.
Block & P. D. Fenves (eds.), The Spirit of Poesy: Essays on Jewish and German Literature
and Thought in Honor of Géza Von Molnar (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 2000).

84
 ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE

only as the “recollection” and “inwardizing” of those modes.34 Without that

grasp of itself as contingent and yet demanding justification of itself—a task
which has now become not national but global, that is, a demand of the
“world spirit,” not of nations—it would indeed be “lifeless and alone,”35 a
piece of philosophy cut off from the practical roots which sustain its thought
of itself, and would thus be a merely formal enterprise (lifeless) having no real
link to the rest of the form of life of which it is a part (alone). But, thanks to
the Phenomenology’s logic, it is supposedly not lifeless; instead, in the final
metaphor it finds its own “infinity,” that is, its true infinite judgment
“foaming” up to it as its continual self-critique makes it continually dis-
satisfied with where it has been.

34
The way in which this kind of philosophical, conceptual grasp of things depends on its
preserving the earlier results of art and religion is admirably treated in Benjamin Rutter,
Hegel on the Modern Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
35
§808.

85
 From Finite Thinking to Infinite Spirit
How to Encounter Hegel after Heidegger’s Translation
SUSANNA LINDBERG

The Phenomenology of Spirit ends with a description of “absolute

knowledge,” or “knowing,” das absolute Wissen. The wording is impressive:
what is absolute knowledge, “spirit knowing itself in the shape of spirit” or
“comprehending conceptual knowledge”?1
In our day it is uncommon to make the claim that knowledge should be
absolute—truth and certainty of all of reality. But the claim was dis-
concerting in Hegel’s time, too: at that time, the German Idealists’ demand
for absoluteness appeared as a defiant transgression of the limits of healthy
reason defined by Kant. Hegel’s reason is more than “reasonable.” It thinks
that knowledge is not worthy of its concept if it is not absolute, and that a
human being is not worthy of his determination (Bestimmung) if he does
not believe that he is worthy of the absolute. Not that the absolute would be
the object of the human being’s meditation. On the contrary, knowledge is
the absolute’s own knowledge, and what we’re really asking is how the
human being could participate in it. The Phenomenology of Spirit is an
answer to this key question of the age: it is a propaedeutics in which human
consciousness is gradually brought up to the measure of the absolute.
Each of the previous chapters of the Phenomenology described aspects of
this formation (Bildung) of self-consciousness. In the last chapter, called
“Absolute Knowledge,” self-consciousness has to exceed itself one more

1
“[…] das absolute Wissen; es ist der sich in Geistesgestalt wissende Geist oder das
begreifende Wissen.” Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Hegel, Werke, eds. Eva
Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), vol. 3, 582.
Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard §798. Henceforth quoted in the text as
PhG. This and other quotations from the Phenomenology are from Pinkard’s translation
(quoted in the text as Pinkard, with paragraph number), available online at
http://web.mac.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html.

87
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

time—it has to overcome the very character of its being self-conscious-

ness—and understand that it really is absolute spirit.
All the previous figures (Gestalt, Gestaltung) of spirit have been
particular; their unilaterality, finitude, and historiality account for their
contradictions and negativity. This is precisely why they have been analyzed
as figures and representations (Gestalt and Vorstellung) and not as pure
concepts (Begriff). Even the penultimate chapter, “Revealed Religion,” is
characterized by particularity. Hegel says that the contents of the “revealed
religion,” that is to say of Christianity, are already the absolute spirit, but the
form is still one of simple representation (Vorstellung). This form of
representation still has to be sublated (aufgehoben) if absolute knowledge is
to reach conformity with its concept, that is to say, if it is to be truly
conceptual. In other words, absolute knowledge must overcome the finitude
and the historiality of all of its previous formations, and reach a knowledge
that is absolute, in the sense that it is also infinite and eternal. From the
point of view of the presentation, this means a transition from figure and
representation to concept.
The transition from representation to concept remains difficult in the
Phenomenology, too. It is the Aufhebung par excellence, in which absolute
knowledge overcomes finitude—and conserves it; it shows the truth of
finitude, its eternity.2 Such an idea of the absolute is difficult and actually
ambiguous. Some have deduced that the infinity of absolute knowledge
means its detachment from the contingencies of finite, historical reality, and
its condensation in a pure conceptual construction described in the Science
of Logic, where it is also called “God’s thought before creation.”3 Others, on
the contrary, believe that absolute knowledge is the infinite thinking of
finite reality, thinking that maintains and endures the negativity of nature,
history, and human life. Absolute knowledge is the reason of reality, not its
rationalization. In principle, “absolute knowledge” demands that we
maintain both aspects of reason. But how deep in reality can spirit really
push its roots?
The strength of Heidegger’s radical and partly scandalous interpretation
of Hegel lies in its capacity to show and to test the ambiguity of the “infinite
thought of the finite.” This is why I will now examine precisely Heidegger’s
interpretation of the absolute knowledge chapter.

2
See Wissenschaft der Logik, Werke 5, 163–164; trans. A. V. Miller, Hegel’s Science of
Logic (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 147–149.
3
Wissenschaft der Logik, Werke 5, 44; Science of Logic, 50.

88
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

In his long career, Heidegger gave around fifteen lecture courses on

Hegel; he published one book and three important articles on Hegel, and
discussed him in several other books and conferences; notes of his lecture
courses on Hegel continue to appear posthumously.4 Heidegger’s inter-
pretations have provided an important provocative impulse to Hegel
scholarship particularly when it comes to questions of time, history, and the
appearing of being. Heidegger’s example has also encouraged philosophers
to try to locate the human being in Hegel’s system—although Heidegger
himself never interpreted the Hegelian subjectivity as a human being, but
only as the subject of absolute knowledge. Heidegger’s interpretations of
Hegel have been almost as influential as his interpretations of Nietzsche and
Hölderlin. He clearly knew Hegel well and took him seriously. But he
recognized in Hegel an adversary (no doubt this accounts for the reserved
attitude towards Heidegger shown by certain Hegel scholars). For
Heidegger, Hegel stands for the “completion of metaphysics,”5 and in this
regard, he is precisely what Heidegger wanted to overcome, or at least
clearly separate himself from, in his own “thinking of being.”
The primary focus of Heidegger’s interpretations of Hegel is the
Phenomenology of Spirit. He appreciates this book greatly and takes it to be
an “event in the history of being,”6 and its “rushed, bridled, almost insane”7
difficulty shows how the event of the Phenomenology surpassed even
Hegel’s own forces. Heidegger admires the book. Nevertheless, it seems to
me that it was difficult for him to follow its rhythm and to grasp it. In his
lecture courses he seems to start the book over and over again (“Hegel’s
Concept of Experience” analyzes the introduction and, Hegel’s Phenom-
enology of Spirit, the consciousness chapter, and he hardly ever goes as far as

4
In particular, the book Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes (winter semester 1930–1931),
GA 32, the opuscule Identität und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), and the articles
“Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung,” in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1980), and “Hegel und die Griechen,” in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1958). One should also note the conferences and the discussions in “Hegel
und das Problem der Metaphysik” (1930), in La fête de la pensée, hommage à François
Fédier, eds. H. France-Lanord & F. Midal (Paris: Lettrage, 2001), and “Vier Seminare (Le
Thor, 1968),” in Seminare, GA 15. Among the posthumous lecture courses one should
note at least the volumes GA 28 Die deutsche Idealismus, GA 68 Hegel, GA 36/37 Sein
und Wahrheit, and GA 86 Seminare: Hegel - Schelling.
5
“Überwindung der Metaphysik,” in Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze (Stuttgart:
Neske, 1994), 72; trans. Joan Stambaugh, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of
Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 89.
6
Martin Heidegger, Hegel (1938–1942), GA 68, 73.
7
Heidegger, Der deutsche Idealismus, GA 28, 214.

89
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

the self-consciousness chapter—although he once said that it is only with

that chapter that the book actually begins.8
Heidegger reads these texts from the point of view of the absolute, which
is the perspective of the end of the book. His key question is: Why does
Hegel think that knowledge must be absolute? What does absoluteness
mean? Heidegger’s answer is as follows: “[for Hegel] the fundamentum
absolutum is thought as the absolute itself. For Hegel, the absolute is spirit:
that which is present to itself in the certainty of unconditional self-knowing
[“das in der Gewissheit der unbedingten Sichwissens bei sich selbst
Anwesende“].”9 Heidegger does not approach the mystery of the absolute by
analyzing a “saying of the absolute” (Spruch) that Hegel would advance, as
he usually does in his commentaries on previous philosophers. One could
even say mordaciously that the heart of his interpretation of the
Phenomenology is the chapter on absolute knowledge—the precise inter-
pretation of which has been omitted (or at least not published) by him.
What Heidegger does, instead, is translate Hegel’s word “absolute” into a
language commensurate with Heidegger’s own thinking. “Absolut” is
“Absolvenz”; the absolute is absolution, which is a religious term for
exculpation, remission, and accomplishment.10 By this Heidegger means an
emancipation from immediate objectivity so that things shall only be
observed from the point of view of representation11—and contrary to Hegel,
Heidegger makes no distinction between concept and representation. This
makes clear Hegel’s distance from Heidegger’s own thought—for Heidegger
seeks to destroy representational thinking, to penetrate through it into
being itself. Actually, this schematic opposition does not take us very far,
but in any event I will not develop it further here, since Heidegger’s
argument with Hegel is not my focus today.12 My aim is simply to show how
Heidegger’s scant remarks point to essential moments in the absolute
knowledge chapter.

8
Heidegger, Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus (Schelling), GA 49, 176.
9
Heidegger, “Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung,” Holzwege, 125; trans. Julian Young and
Kenneth Haynes, “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” in Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), 97.
10
“Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung,”132; “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” 102; Hegel
(1938–1942), 83.
11
“Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung,” 140 et seq.; “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” 108 et seq.
12
I treat the subject extensively in my Heidegger contre Hegel: Les irréconciliables (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2010).

90
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

Two quotations from “Absolute Knowledge” are at the heart of his entire
interpretation of Hegel.
According to the first one, time is the concept itself that exists there
[Begriff der da ist], and when spirit grasps its concept, it annuls / erases /
effaces / obliterates time [tilgt die Zeit]. Here is the entire passage:

Time is the concept itself that exists there [Die Zeit der Begriff selbst der
da ist] and is represented to consciousness as empty intuition.
Consequently, spirit necessarily appears in time, and it appears in time
as long as it does not grasp its pure concept, which is to say, as long as it
does not annul time [nicht die Zeit tilgt]. Time is the pure self externally
intuited by the self but not grasped by the self; time is the merely intuited
concept. Since this concept grasps itself, it sublates its temporal form,
comprehends the act of intuiting, and is intuition which has been
conceptually grasped and is itself intuition which is comprehending.—
Time thus appears as the destiny and necessity of the spirit that is not yet
consummated within itself. (PhG, 584; Pinkard §803)

Heidegger leans on this passage in 1927, in Being and Time’s famous

critique of the Hegelian conception of time, the conclusion of which is that
time is for Hegel only a provisional otherness, exteriority, and alienation.13
Heidegger repeats the same judgment in 1957, in “Die onto-theologische
Verfassung der Metaphysik.” Spirit falls into time, and in the movement of
comprehension, time is destroyed and effaced.14 In his analysis, Heidegger
actually relates Hegel to Aristotle.15 According to Heidegger, Hegel’s time is
simply the time of nature, the eternal succession of nows; and Hegel’s
concept is so much like the eternal self-movement of Aristotle’s god that
you cannot tell them apart.
Heidegger knows, however, that absolute knowledge is not an idea
detached from nature: it is the mediation of idea and existence. For Hegel,
the Greek reference is not sufficient for the understanding of this
mediation, but Christianity provides him with a good model of mediation
in its description of the incarnation of the idea as a finite man and its
resurrection into God’s infinity. This is why Heidegger’s second key
expression from the absolute knowledge chapter is: “the comprehended

13
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1984), §82, 434–435.
14
Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, 33–36.
15
Sein und Zeit, §82, 432–433, cf. Jacques Derrida, “Ousia et grammè,” in Derrida,
Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972).

91
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

history is the ‘Golgotha of absolute spirit.’” The expression comes from the
very last lines of the Phenomenology:

The goal, absolute knowledge, that is, spirit knowing itself as spirit, has
the recollection of spirits as they are in themselves and as they achieve
the organization of their realm. Their preservation in terms of their free-
standing existence appearing in the form of contingency is history, but
in terms of their conceptually grasped organization, it is the science of
phenomenal knowledge. Both together are conceptually grasped history;
they form the recollection and the Golgotha of absolute spirit, the
actuality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it would be
lifeless and alone; only –

Out of the chalice of this realm of spirits

Foams forth to him his infinity.
(PhG, 591; Pinkard §808.)

Here, the “comprehended history” is the “Golgotha of absolute spirit” (and

not only the “altar on which the happiness of nations, the wisdom of states,
and the virtue of individuals is slaughtered,” like in the later lectures on the
philosophy of history, which follow the scheme of tragedy.16 As “Golgotha,”
history is identified with Christ’s suffering and death, and spirit with life
after resurrection. The idea of the Christ as the determinate historical
existence (Dasein) of the absolute was the principal content of the previous
chapter, “Revealed Religion,” and “Absolute Knowledge” was supposed to
have the same contents as “Revealed Religion,” differing only in form. The
logic of Christianity explains how the idea touches finite reality—only to
leave it immediately behind. Finitude is simply something into which the
idea falls, and that it overcomes in its resurrection. The properly finite
aspect of finitude—its contingency, negativity, contradictions and death—
are left over like mortal remains that spirit will not touch.17

16
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke 12, 35; trans H. B. Nisbet,
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction; Reason in History (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 69.
17
Drawing on Bataille’s work, Derrida examines in Glas everything that the spirit cannot
“digest” and which therefore “remains”: the illegitimate child, the desiring woman, all
kinds of waste and uselessness. On the contrary, certain newer interpretations have
sought to prove that Hegel gives an essential position to such elements that escape
spiritual determinations: they belong to the category of contingency. See Bernard
Mabille, Hegel, l’épreuve de la contingence (Paris: Aubier, 1999), and Jean-Marie Lardic,

92
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

Heidegger juxtaposes the “Golgotha of absolute spirit” with the

“speculative Good Friday” described on the last lines of the opuscule
Glauben und Wissen (1802). Here, too, spirit rises from the terror of the
death of God to resurrection, from the most painful conceptlessness to the
freest figure of the concept.18 Thinking of these passages, Heidegger
interprets the absolute spirit essentially as the Parousia of spirit.19 Parousia
is a theological term meaning the Christ’s second coming at the End of
Days. Applied to the Phenomenology, it means that it is in absolute
knowledge that spirit appears entirely and definitively. Of course spirit is
always already “with us,” bei uns; but it has to endure the slow and painful
process of the formation of self-consciousness in order to present this
being-close-to-us as such, not only at the light of the absolute but as the
light of the absolute.20 The Parousia of the absolute is like God’s perfect
presence to us. According to Heidegger, Hegel’s absolute is “onto-theo-
logical”: it is God turned into logos; on the one hand, it is detached from
history (it is not the particular god of a historical people), on the other
hand, it remains theological (that is to say, it is a theory of the Supreme
Being, causa sui). This is how Heidegger interprets Hegel as a theological
thinker, although hardly as a Christian thinker.21
The idea of the Parousia of the absolute sketches a kind of “end of
history.” The Parousia of the absolute does not end history with any part-
icular event. (As Hegel says, the Christ’s historical existence is far behind us
and it has not stopped history;22 and of course Hegel says nothing about a
“world spirit on a horseback” in the chapter on “absolute knowledge.”)23 On

“La contingence chez Hegel,” in Lardic, Hegel: Comment le sens commun comprend la
philosophie (Arles: Actes sud, 1989).
18
Glauben und Wissen, Werke 2, 432–433.
19
“Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung,” 198; “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” 153.
20
Ibid., 137; ibid., 106.
21
Identität und Differenz, 64.
22
Cf. Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Werke 18, 27.
23
In Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel, history ends with a single figure (Napoleon, Hegel
himself, or alternatively the modern US, Soviet Union, or Japan). In philosophy this
means that absolute knowledge unites its absolute subject and its finite agent in one
figure of total knowledge. Kojève says that “absolute knowledge” is not wisdom but the
Wise Man (le Sage), a human being of flesh and blood, who realizes wisdom or science in
his activity; see Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 323.
He continues by saying that the Wise Man is an entirely satisfied human being who
knows everything and is completely conscious of himself (ibid, 272). He is also morally
perfect and can be a model for others. The appearance of the Wise Man is an event in the
history of the world: the Wise Man is Hegel, who has perfectly recognized God in

93
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

the contrary, the absolute is defined, so to speak, in a “final” manner: from

the point of view of its “end” or “goal.” This does not mean (simply) that
philosophy reaches the absolute when it is able to think the whole of what is
and what has been. It means more essentially that reaching the absolute
requires the understanding of the final character of the history of
consciousness: that although the beginning produces the end, only the end
can justify the beginning. This is why absolute knowledge must be defined
as the end of the process. Because of the teleological nature of the growth of
spirit, the goal of the absolute is “always already there”; but it really appears
only when the goal comes forth as the knowledge of the need to understand
the sense of the spirit from its “end.” Against this idea, Heidegger raises his
own “eschatology of being” that consists in thinking the sense of being and
of time as something that is still to come.24 Correlatively, Heideggerian
thinking is finite (and not absolute) because it is a question addressed to
something that is merely coming, and to this coming itself. The general idea
is that when Hegel’s “end-oriented thinking” “closes” history, Heidegger’s
“coming thinking” only “opens” it to the possibility of coming events.
Hegel’s philosophy is incapable of welcoming any new event; it cannot be
surprised: in it, everything is fulfilled.25
Heidegger is by no means the only one to interpret Hegel in the
framework of Christian theology. This is indeed one way to interpret Hegel,
but in my opinion, it is an unnecessarily backward-looking interpretation,
and this is why I would like to approach the question from a different angle.
I would like to take seriously Hegel’s claim that philosophy is the highest
form of absolute spirit and, in this sense, something other than religion.
Furthermore, the “theological” interpretation of absolute knowledge leads
to a picture of a supra-temporal, purely logical spirit. But isn’t such an
interpretation of Hegel in the end too unilateral—in particular, because it
detaches Hegel’s thought from the “concrete life” that was, after all, a

Napoleon. Knowledge exists empirically in Hegel’s book, i.e. in the Phenomenology of

Spirit, which annuls time and refuses the possibility of a future (ibid., 384).—Of course
there is no textual support for these claims.
24
“Der Spruch der Anaximander,” in Heidegger, Holzwege, 323; Off the Beaten Track, 247.
25
In her book L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (Paris: Vrin, 1996),
Catherine Malabou has tried to show that a dimension of futurity belongs to Hegel’s
thought. Derrida, in his article “Le temps des adieux: Heidegger (lu par) Hegel (lu par)
Malabou” (Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 1998), points out that this
does not lead to an assimilation of Hegel and Heidegger: while the future can surprise
Hegel, Heidegger’s thinking has been entirely constructed on the horizon of the future.

94
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

genuine question for him? As I said, the idea of an absolute knowledge is

ambiguous: it is not only a rationalization of reality; it is the rationality of
reality. To what extent can absolute knowledge preserve the finite, histo-
rical, figural, and representative reality from which it arises?
Such questions also motivate Heidegger’s interpretation of Hegel. When
he is not simply trying to ward off the “accomplishment of metaphysics,”
when he is on the contrary trying to account for the family resemblance
between himself and Hegel, his interpretation is more nuanced than the one
presented above. The identification of the absolute with God-logos is only
one aspect of his interpretation. On another level, he recognizes a
vertiginous proximity between himself and Hegel, when it comes to seizing
finite existence. Following this lead, Heidegger writes, “we shall try to
encounter Hegel on the problematic of finitude. This means, according to
what we said earlier, that through a confrontation with Hegel’s problematic
of infinitude, we shall try to create, on the basis of our own inquiry into
finitude, the kinship needed in order to reveal the spirit of Hegel’s
philosophy.”26 In 1929, Heidegger suggests: “Hegel is opposed to the idea
that eternity would be an ‘abstraction from time’. . . eternity in its absolute-
ness is on the contrary something that time liberates from itself and that is
still not torn away from time. . . the essential problem: doesn’t Hegel say
that the genuine concept of eternity is born from time and thus it reveals its
finitude? Is time the origin of eternity?”27 Heidegger does not follow up on
this lead, however. But following him, we can state that it is possible to read
Hegel as a thinker of finitude. This does not mean a reduction of Hegel to
Heidegger, but the discovery of a different idea of finitude than Heidegger’s.
In order to understand this idea we have to return to the question of the
relation of absolute knowledge to time. In the passage quoted by Heidegger,
when “spirit annuls time,” Hegel is speaking about the “time of nature,”
which at first is simply hidden in objective reality. The concept surely
destroys the idea of time as a detached, external form of intuition. But on
the other hand, the concept also produces its own time and in particular the
“absolute memory” (Erinnerung) that coincides with neither natural time
nor a timeless idea.

26
Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes (winter semester 1930–1931), GA 32, 55; trans.
Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1988), 38.
27
Der deutsche Idealismus, GA 28, 211.

95
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

How does this happen? I quote more key passages from the three last
pages of the Phenomenology:

In this knowledge, spirit has brought to a close the movement of giving

shape to itself. . . Spirit has won the pure element of its existence, the
concept. [...] Conversely, to every abstract moment of science, there
corresponds a shape of appearing spirit per se. Just as existing spirit is
not richer than science, so, too, is spirit in its content not poorer. [...]

Science contains within itself the necessity to empty itself of the form of
the pure concept [...].

Knowing is acquainted not merely with itself but also with the negative
of itself, that is, its limit. To know its limit means to know that it is to
sacrifice itself. This sacrifice is the self-emptying within which spirit
exhibits its coming-to-be-spirit in the form of a free contingent event,
and it intuits outside of itself its pure self as time and likewise intuits its
being as space. This final coming-to-be, nature, is its living, immediate
coming-to-be; nature, that is, spirit emptied of itself, is in its existence
nothing but this eternal self-emptying of its durable existence and the
movement that produces the subject.
However, the other aspect of spirit’s coming-to-be, history, is that
mindful (wissende) self-mediating coming-to-be—the spirit emptied into
time. However, this emptying is likewise the self-emptying of itself; the
negative is the negative of itself. This coming-to-be exhibits a languid
movement and succession of spirits, a gallery of pictures, of which each,
endowed with the entire wealth of spirit, moves itself so slowly because
the self has to take hold of and assimilate the whole of this wealth of its
substance. Since its consummation consists in spirit’s completely
knowing what it is, is spirit knowing its substance, this knowledge is its
taking-the-inward-turn within which spirits forsakes its existence and
gives its shape over to recollection (Erinnerung). In taking-the-inward-
turn, spirit is absorbed into the night of its self-consciousness, but its
vanished existence is preserved in that night, and this sublated
existence—the existence which was prior but is now newborn in
knowledge—is the new existence, a new world, and a new shape of spirit.
Within that new shape of spirit, it likewise has to begin all over again
without prejudice in its immediacy, and from its immediacy to rear itself
once again to maturity, as if all that had preceded it were lost to it and as
if it were to have learned nothing from the experience of the preceding
spirits. However, that inwardizing re-collection (Er-innerung) has
preserved that experience; it is what is inner, and it is in fact the higher

96
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

form of substance. [...] The goal of this movement is the revelation of

depth itself, and this is the absolute concept. (PhG, 588, 591; Pinkard,
§807–808)

According to Hegel, “time is the existing concept itself” (die Zeit ist der
daseiende Begriff selbst) (PhG, 45–46, 584; Pinkard §39, and §801). The
passage underlined by Heidegger, in which “spirit necessarily appears in
time, and it appears in time as long as it does not grasp its pure concept,
which is to say, as long as it does not annul time” only describes the natural
time found in sense perception: indeed, pure disparition is the essence of
this time. But spirit does not remain such a pure I detached from nature.
On the contrary, it creates time again as its own dimension, and henceforth
time is regarded as spirit’s own dimension in reality. This is how spirit
“sacrifices itself,” “externalizes itself” and only exists as a “free contingent
event,” that is to say, as time and space, in other words, as nature insofar as
nature is for Hegel the “being-otherwise of spirit.” Furthermore, spirit
“sacrifices itself” by becoming history, in which things do not disappear,
like in nature, but they are on the contrary conserved in the “night of self-
consciousness.” The own-most existence of spirit is history, which does not
destroy time but on the contrary unfolds it as the proper dimension of the
absolute subject.28

28
According to Heidegger, Hegel understands history only as the provisional being-
otherwise of the idea, and this is why he rejects Hegel’s philosophy of history entirely
(Identität und Differenz, 33–34). Nevertheless, Hegel does say that the idea must be
historical and briefly shows why this is so—but he never develops properly the
“metaphysics of time” that would finally explain the historicity of the idea; see Hegel,
Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie: Einleitung; Orientalische Philosophie,
ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1993), 29 et seq. Several commentators have
reacted against Heidegger’s categorical rejection of Hegel’s philosophy of history and
followed Hegel’s thesis of the historicity of the idea. Generally the demonstration of the
historicity of the idea goes hand in hand with the rejection of the idea of the “end of
history.” The best book on the subject is Oskar Daniel Brauer, Dialektik der Zeit:
Untersuchungen zu Hegels Metaphysik der Weltgeschichte (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt:
Frommann-Holzboog, 1982), see esp. 155–196. See also Stefan Matjeschack, Die Logik
des Absoluten: Spekulation und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hegels (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1992), 308–335. A convincing analysis of the question is also given by
Christophe Bouton, in Temps et esprit dans la philosophie de Hegel. De Francfort à Iéna
(Paris: Vrin, 2000), 272–298, and idem., “Hegel penseur de la ‘fin de l’histoire’?” in
“Hegel penseur de la ‘fin de l’histoire’?,” in Après la fin de l’histoire: Temps, monde,
historicité, eds. J. Benoist & F. Merlini (Paris: Vrin, 1998), as well as Franck Fischbach, in
L’Être et l’acte: Enquête sur les fondements de l’ontologie moderne de l’agir (Paris: Vrin,
2002), 85–88. Behind these analyses one can feel the influence of Jean-Luc Nancy’s
Hegel: L’inquiétude du négatif (Paris: Hachette, 1997) and Cathérine Malabou’s L’avenir

97
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

These images must not be understood as if the absolute were a stabile

subject, a consciousness facing a stabile object or more precisely the
subject’s representation of its object. Spirit is not one of the poles of this
pulse of “self-sacrificing” and “rediscovery”: it is the process itself. Let us
look at it more closely.
For Hegel, the essence of spirit is that its being is an act.29 In order to
be true to its concept, the act must not remain potential but must be
realized precisely in contingent reality. This is why, also according to the
Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia, the absolute idea is “liberated”
when it becomes nature, that is to say, contingent spatio-temporal
happening.30 Only then can it progressively become history, which is the
proper origin of the idea. The Phenomenology describes the same
process from the point of view of absolute knowing: the absolute cannot
know itself if it does not let go and abandon itself to the negativities of
nature and history. The absolute is this “free contingent event” and “the
night of self-consciousness.” It only knows itself when it “reveals this
depth.” At the same time, it finds something new and surprising: a new
form produced by a sort of unconscious imagination of nature and of the
past. The exteriority of spirit is productive and inventive: it delivers
something unheard-of, of which the absolute had no idea. Maybe it was
already “contained” in it—but when the absolute is defined as knowledge,
unconscious contents cannot exactly be considered to be a part of the
absolute. Finally, on the level of absolute knowledge, the absolute “reveals
the depths” precisely when it finds this “imagination” that is its own-
most substance. Then it realizes that its “recollection” is not a simple
storage of past representations but an unconscious activity, through
which such representations are synthesized into something new. When
Heidegger criticizes the “metaphysics of representation,” he thinks that
the representation is conserved as such in its being-otherwise. But for

de Hegel, 220–221. Michel Haar, in his “Structures hégéliennes dans la pensée

heideggérienne de l’Histoire” (Revue de métaphysique et de morale, Jan-March 1980),
shows strikingly how close Heidegger’s own thinking of historicity is to Hegel’s
philosophy of history.
29
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie: Einleitung; Orientalische
Philosophie, 8; see also Fischbach, L’Être et l’acte, 57 et seq.
30
Wissenschaft der Logik, Werke 6, 573; Science of Logic, 843.

98
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

Hegel, on the contrary, imagination is a productive dimension and not

one that conserves.31
I would now like to end with an interpretation that is not shared by all,
and that I cannot, stricto sensu, claim to be the only possible one, because
now we are on a level that Hegel himself discusses in only a very limited
way. I think that at the end of the Phenomenology, at the moment of its
“Golgotha,” the absolute disappears in the nightly darkness of nature and
forgetfulness over and over again. There is no end of history; on the
contrary, the very finality of thought keeps history moving. I find it
absurd to say that at the culminating point of the Phenomenology the
movement of the absolute would be stopped by a particular historical
figure, were it Christ or Napoleon himself. The idea of the completion of
the movement of the absolute as the Parousia of the absolute is not as
absurd, but I find it, too, powerless: it is based on the idea that only the
thinking of the future, and not of the past, can keep thought open to new
events and prevent the dogmatic closure. The thinking of the “coming”
might be more effective than the thinking of the past, but the latter is not
powerless either. The past can be over, its thinking cannot be—and if it
were, the whole of the project of history of philosophy and philosophy of
history would be devoid of interest.
The absolute that is revealed in the last pages of the Phenomenology is
not a particular figure; nor is it an extreme vision of the “pure light” of
knowing described by Heidegger. The absolute is a free act and idea.
Because it is an act, it cannot remain simply potential. Because it is an idea,
it cannot be an object of a calm internal intuition. The idea is properly
present only in the act of knowing itself: seen from the point of view of such
an act, the eternal idea is the goal of the action and the historical idea is its
result, but none exists without the other. This is why the idea has to have its
“temporal existence” with all its tearing, restlessness, and negativity. The
absolute is a double movement: on the one hand it has to be realized as
particular figures, on the other hand it has to crush each and every one of
them, precisely because they are particular and not true to the infinity of the
idea. This is why the absolute is the movement of an infinite figuration and
defiguration. It is not a series of modifications of an unlikely archetype; it is
the very movement of figuration. It is not a simple principle of metamor-

31
Cf. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften III, Werke 10, § 455; trans. M. J.
Petry, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), §455.

99
 SUSANNA LINDBERG

phosis but the movement in which the absolute’s figures are born and die.
The absolute exists most perfectly in this act of its realization. It is neither
the acting subject, nor the object that results from such an action, but it is
the action itself. The process engenders the subject and the object, not the
other way round.
Thinking the absolute is thinking this movement. Such a thinking
“reveals the depth” by bringing out the activity of birth and death of par-
ticular figures. The activity itself cannot be an object of a calm
representation. Only the concept can describe it—because the concept is its
own movement. When thinking reaches the goal of spirit, it understands
the paradoxical structure that keeps it going. The paradox of thought is that
the idea seems simultaneously to precede the act in which it is realized, and
to result from it. The eternal idea is the goal of the activity, the historical
idea is its result, and yet the eternal idea does not pre-exist its realization,
because it only exists historically. As Otto Brauer says: the idea is an artist:
“it has to make itself what it knows itself to be, but it does not know what it
is before it has made itself.”32
This is why I think that the absolute knowing never “ends,” but starts
over and over again. It is not a simple image of this movement, but a going
along with the movement itself.
Hegel scholars are generally aware of the possibility of opposing this
kind of processual interpretation of the absolute to the systematic one
(where the end of history is admitted, as well as the closure of the process
of thought in absolute knowing). Actually, Hegel offers elements consist-
ent with both interpretations without really resolving the antagonism
between them.
Choosing the processual interpretation, I stress that “infinity” is mainly
the infinity of the thought of finite reality, and that “reason” is not an
independent entity beyond the finite world but the desire of reason in the
world itself, the desire that produces the reason of a reality that does not
have it in the beginning. Now, such a thought of the logos of the finite world
comes very close to Heidegger’s thinking of being, much closer than
Heidegger would like to admit. But does it go so far as to coincide with it?
In the end, it does not. Hegel urges us to think what happens; he also
realizes the need for thinking that it happens—that happening (Geschehen)

32
Brauer, Dialektik der Zeit, 156.

100
 FROM FINITE THINKING TO INFINITE SPIRIT

is the proper mode of truth.33 For him, the historical event is the origin of
truth, and as far as there is no ideal world behind the events, truth is
manifested in the very event. Hegel goes as far as this: he opens the
antagonism between ideality and historiality, he urges us to think about it as
the main antagonism of thought, but, in the end, he never writes the
“metaphysics of time” that ought to have explained this complication
properly. Heidegger, on the contrary, thematizes precisely the question of
the happening of truth. For instance, in “Zeit und Sein,” he obliges us to
think, beyond events themselves, the “giving” of time and being—es gibt
Sein and es gibt Zeit—that “gives” the events, and this givenness itself is the
ultimate theme of thought. In this sense, Heidegger would clearly thematize
something that Hegel only felt obscurely, for instance when the latter spoke,
not so very clearly, about the “chalice of the realm of spirits that lets
infinitude foam forth.” In this sense, Heidegger’s profound question of the
finiteness of truth encourages us to re-read Hegel in order to find his
answer to it. This is the real translation of thought he obliges us to engage in:
not a simple change of words, but a transformation of the question that calls
forth the words, too.

33
This is explained very well by Jean-Luc Nancy in “La surprise de l’événement,” in
Nancy, Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilée, 1996).

101
 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Some Problems and Perspectives
CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

In the mid-1990s, I published a running commentary on Hegel’s

Phenomenology of Spirit.1 To my knowledge it was the first full-length
commentary in a Scandinavian language. Furthermore, there existed at the
time no complete translation of the Phenomenology into any Scandinavian
language. Since then a Norwegian, a Danish, and recently a Swedish trans-
lation have been published. Being a sociologist, I have in later years only
occasionally returned to Hegel and the Phenomenology. Thus, what I will
do in the following text is to recall some of the problems I was struggling
with when I wrote my commentary and to present some aspects of an
interpretation.

Where not to start: The preface

The Phenomenology begins with a famous preface. It is certainly an

important text for the understanding of Hegel’s philosophy. However, I
don’t think that the key to the Phenomenology is to be found there. The
preface was intended as a preface to the whole of the system Hegel planned
to publish, and not particularly to the Phenomenology. Therefore, in my
view the preface should be read after the reading of the Phenomenology,
just as Hegel wrote it after having finished his manuscript in October 1806.
In the following, I will make use of some formulations taken from the
preface (which Hegel sent to the publisher in January 1807).

1
Carl-Göran Heidegren, Hegels Fenomenologi: En analys och kommentar [Hegel’s
Phenomenology: An analysis and commentary] (Stockholm/Stehag: Symposion, 1995).

103
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

Right now I just want to draw attention to an important clue to the

spiritual atmosphere that animates the Phenomenology and to Hegel’s
mood while writing the book. I’m thinking of the oft-quoted lines in the
preface: “Besides, it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a
period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has
hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the
past, and in the labour of its own transformation” (§11; 18).2 A few months
later, in August 1807, Hegel wrote in a letter to a friend about “the great
constitutional lawyer in Paris,”3 i.e. Napoleon, the personalized world soul
whom Hegel had seen riding through Jena at the time he was finishing the
manuscript to the Phenomenology. At the time, Hegel thus obviously had
great expectations that a new world was in the making and, so it seems, he
saw a connection between his book project and this process of change.

Where to start: The introduction

In my view, close attention should be devoted to the introduction to the

Phenomenology, which comprises about ten pages. There Hegel presents an
operation by which consciousness investigates itself—both what it takes to
be the truth or being-in-itself and its actual knowledge. “Consciousness
simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time
relates itself to it, or, as it is said, this something exists for consciousness.
. . . [W]hatever is related to knowledge or knowing is also distinguished
from it, and posited as existing outside of this relationship; this being-in-
itself is called truth” (§82; 76).4 This difference between knowing and truth is
called the opposition of consciousness. However, consciousness does not
have any direct access to the True as it exists in itself, and so it seems that it

2
The first reference is to Miller’s translation of the Phenomenology, G. W. F. Hegel,
Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977),
the second is to volume 3 of the Suhrkamp edition, G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des
Geistes. Werke 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970). Compare the words with which
Hegel closed his lectures at Jena in September 1806: “We stand at the gates of an
important epoch, a time of ferment, when spirit moves forward in a leap, transcends its
previous shape and takes on a new one. […] Philosophy especially has to welcome its
appearance and acknowledge it, while others, who oppose it impotently, cling to the past.”
Quoted in Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972), 64. All translations from the German texts are my own.
3
Briefe von und an Hegel, vol. I., ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 1952), 185.
4
In my quotations from the Phenomenology I have left out the italics.

104
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

does not have any standard by which to measure its knowledge. But
according to Hegel, consciousness provides its own standard by which it
investigates its knowledge. “Thus in what consciousness affirms from
within itself as being-in-itself or the True we have the standard which
consciousness itself sets up by which to measure what it knows” (§84; 77).
Based on the distinction between knowing and truth, Hegel presents a
procedure by which consciousness investigates itself, and which gives rise to
an internal dynamic and development by which consciousness progresses
from one shape to another. When the opposition of consciousness is done
away with, is finally overcome, we have reached the realm of absolute
knowing, i.e. the standpoint of Hegel’s system. Thus, the primary goal of the
Phenomenology is to overcome the opposition of consciousness, the
opposition between knowing and truth. As long as this opposition exists,
consciousness has further experiences to make. This is the Phenomenology
as an epistemological project.
I would like to suggest as a heuristic principle for the interpretation of
the Phenomenology to start out from this internal dynamic by which
consciousness investigates itself, and see how far the different chapters of
the book lend themselves to an interpretation based on this dynamic.

Two perspectives: “For consciousness” and “for us”

In the introduction, Hegel also makes an important distinction between two

perspectives represented in the Phenomenology. One is the perspective of
the consciousness that takes on different shapes and makes various
experiences; this perspective is called “for consciousness.” The other
perspective is from the standpoint of absolute knowing, i.e. from the
standpoint of the author of the Phenomenology; this perspective is called
“for us” or “we.” The latter perspective is also to a certain extent the pers-
pective of the reader of the Phenomenology, being on his or her way
towards the standpoint of absolute knowing.
The organization of each chapter in the book, or rather of each shape of
consciousness, is in my view the following. First, Hegel presents a certain
shape of consciousness from the perspective of “we” or “for us,” for example
sense-certainty, perception, etc. Then the dialectical movement of conscious-
ness takes place, the process by which consciousness investigates itself, now
from the perspective of “for consciousness” itself. Finally, a transition to the

105
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

next shape of consciousness is effected by means of a determinate negation or

the reversal of consciousness, once again from the perspective of “we” or “for
us.” It is not always easy to trace this organization in three steps in the
different chapters, nor is it always an easy task to decide where the dialectical
movement of consciousness begins and where it ends, but still I think it is
possible to make out these moments in each chapter. In fact, that the three
steps can be distinguished from one another is a precondition for Hegel’s
phenomenological method—the dialectic of consciousness, as presented in
the introduction—having any plausibility at all.

Two titles

Next, I want to address two problems located so to speak at the gate to the
Phenomenology.
The first is the problem of the two titles. The book was first to appear
under the title “Science of the Experience of Consciousness,” but it finally
appeared under the title “Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit.” Does
this change of title indicate that the conception of the book changed during
the time of writing it? I don’t think so. In fact, Hegel introduces a notion of
spirit rather early in the text, at the beginning of chapter IV, in terms of “I
that is We and We that is I” (§177; 145), and furthermore announces:
“What still lies ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is”
(ibid.). Thus, the science of the experience of consciousness comprises the
experience of what spirit is.
How then to interpret the change of title? In the preface, Hegel presents
us with the idea of a ladder that takes the individual to the standpoint of
science, i.e. absolute knowing. “The individual has the right to demand that
Science should at least provide him with the ladder to this standpoint,
should show him this standpoint within himself” (§26; 29). Now, obviously,
you can climb a ladder upwards as well as downwards, you can ascend it as
well as descend it, and this goes for Hegel’s ladder too. My thesis is that
from one perspective—climbing the ladder upwards—“Science of the
Experience of Consciousness” is the more adequate title, and from the other
perspective—descending the ladder—“Science of the Phenomenology of
Spirit” is the more adequate. In the first case we have to do with the
formative education of consciousness, in the second case with the reflection
of spirit into itself, with substance becoming subject. Hegel stresses this

106
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

double perspective in the following sentence from the preface: “In this
respect formative education, regarded from the side of the individual,
consists in his acquiring what thus lies at hand, devouring his inorganic
nature, and taking possession of it for himself. But, regarded from the side
of universal spirit as substance, this is nothing but its own acquisition of
self-consciousness, the bringing-about of its own becoming and reflection
into itself” (§28; 33).

Two divisions of content

The second problem relates to the two divisions of content. The running text
is divided into eight chapters with Roman numerals. However, in the table
of contents at the beginning of the book, Hegel inserted a second division
with capital letters in combination with the Roman numerals.

Roman numerals Capital letters

A. Consciousness
I. Sense-Certainty
II. Perception
III. Force and Understanding
IV. The Truth of Self-Certainty B. Self-Consciousness
A A
B B
V. The Certainty and Truth of Reason C.AA. Reason
A A
B B
C C
VI. Spirit BB. Spirit
A A
B B
C C
VII. Religion CC. Religion
A A
B B
C C
VII. Absolute Knowing DD. Absolute Knowing

107
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

Do the two divisions of content indicate a change in the conception of the

book? The eight chapters with Roman numerals are very disproportionate.
In the original publication from 1807, chapter one on sense-certainty
comprises 16 pages, chapter two on perception 21 pages, whereas chapters
five and six, on reason and spirit respectively, comprise 214 and 249 pages.
This led Otto Pöggeler, a well-known Hegel scholar, to assume that Hegel
must have lost control over the process of writing somewhere in the chapter
on reason (V).5 This is a rather fantastic idea: imagine a famous philosopher
losing control over what he was doing, and ending up writing a book that he
had not intended to write. This is indeed a very postmodern way to
conceive the coming into being of the Phenomenology: a text more or less
without an author.
Hegel from the beginning probably had in mind a correspondence
between the structure of the Phenomenology and the development of
categories in his Logic. Towards the end of the Phenomenology we read:
“To each abstract moment of Science [Logic] corresponds a shape of
manifest Spirit as such [Phenomenology]” (§805; 589). The problem is that
Hegel’s Logic was in state of flux at the time he wrote the Phenomenology.
It did not yet have the shape of the later Science of Logic from 1812–16, and
it no longer had the shape of the Jena manuscript on Logic and Metaphysics
from 1804–05. The best guess of what his Logic looked like at the time is
probably the very rudimentary sketch that Hegel presents towards the end
of the so-called Jenaer Realphilosophie from 1805–06: “absolute being,
becoming other (relation), life and knowing—knowing about knowing,
spirit, spirit knowing itself.”6 This division can be broadly related to the
Roman numerals.
The division with capital letters is also puzzling. A triad, A-B-C, passes
over into a quadruple, AA-BB-CC-DD, all four being subdivisions of the
chapter C in the triad. Furthermore, the chapter C has no heading of its own.
I think that the most adequate title for the chapter C would have been reason
in the broad sense of speculative reason, and not reason in the phenom-
enological sense of “the certainty of consciousness that it is all reality” (§233;
179). You can’t go beyond speculative reason, and therefore the following

5
Otto Pöggeler, “Die Komposition der Phänomenologie des Geistes,” in Materialien zu
Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes,” eds. Hans-Friedrich Fulda & Dieter Henrich
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 350.
6
G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe III. Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Meiner,
1976), 286.

108
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

chapters AA-DD are all subdivisions of the chapter C. I will come back to this
issue, the structuring of the Phenomenology, in a later section.

Lordship and bondage

Some words must be said about the chapter on lordship and bondage
(IV.A), probably the most famous and well-known part of the
Phenomenology. How does this chapter fit into the aim of the book as
outlined in the introduction: the overcoming of the opposition of con-
sciousness? One interpreter, John N. Findlay, coming to this chapter, talks
about “a sudden turn from an epistemological to a practical, social level of
argument.”7 If we want to avoid introducing a problematic split into the
Phenomenology, between an epistemological argument and some kind of
social-historical argument, we have to argue that Hegel’s epistemological
project has an essential social and historical dimension. This is in my view
one of the most difficult problems that an interpretation of the Phenom-
enology has to face. I will touch on it here and there in what follows,
especially in the last section, giving some hints about how I want to address
this question.
Furthermore, it is important to distinguish between more or less free
interpretations of the dialectic between the lord and the bondsman,
interpretations that are in some way inspired by Hegel, and interpretations
that claim to capture Hegel’s intention with the chapter. The problem with
Alexandre Kojève’s famous interpretation is that it is a very free inter-
pretation which at the same time claims to capture Hegel’s intention with
the chapter and the whole book.8
All in all, I think it is possible to distinguish between substantial and
formal-structural interpretations of the chapter on lordship and bondage,
between social-historical and psychological interpretations, and between
intersubjectivity-oriented and subjectivity-oriented interpretations. Kojève’s
interpretation, for example, is a substantial, social-historical, and inter-
subjectivity-oriented interpretation. Furthermore, I think there are basically
three options here. Either you opt for an interpretation saying that we are
dealing with two self-consciousnesses, actually two human beings, engaged

7
John N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 96.
8
Cf. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, ed. Allan Bloom, trans.
James H. Nichols (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980 [1969]).

109
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

in a real struggle with one another, having the outcome that the one
becomes the master over the other. Or you opt for an interpretation saying
that we are dealing with some kind of struggle that takes place within a
solitary self-consciousness. Or you argue that the social-historical and
psychological is just a semblance (leading the reader astray), and that Hegel
as a matter of fact is discussing relations between logical categories.
Although I am not in agreement with Kojève, I strongly favor a
substantial, intersubjectivity-oriented interpretation, with a certain social-
historical accentuation. However, such an interpretation must go hand-in-
hand with an interpretation that does not lose sight of the principal aim of
chapter IV, to investigate “what consciousness knows in knowing itself”
(§165; 136), or of the primary goal of the Phenomenology, to overcome the
opposition of consciousness. The strongest argument for an inter-
subjectivity-oriented interpretation I take to be the one based on the
structure of the whole chapter on self-consciousness. If we were having to
do with the cleavage and internal struggle of one self-consciousness, we
would already have reached the shape of consciousness that Hegel calls the
unhappy consciousness (IV.B), a shape that in fact comes after the chapter
on lordship and bondage (IV.A). About the unhappy consciousness,
relating this shape of consciousness to what has gone before, Hegel writes:
“the duplication which formerly was divided between two individuals, the
lord and the bondsman, is now lodged in one” (§206; 163).
In the chapter on lordship and bondage, we are dealing with two willful,
egocentric self-consciousnesses. Each wants to be recognized as inde-
pendent by the other, but without in its turn recognizing the other as
independent. The conflict escalates into a struggle for life and death that
finally crystallizes in the relation between the lord and the bondsman. Quite
interestingly, the outcome of the ensuing dialectic between the lord and the
bondsman is not a relation of mutual recognition. In fact, the chapter comes
to a rather abrupt end. One would have liked to know a little more about
how the bondsman relates to the lord after having caught at least a glimpse
of his own independence, and how the master reacts to the experience of
actually being dependent.9 The essential result of the dialectic is instead the
breaking down of the willfulness of self-consciousness, as a precondition for
being able to obey one’s own reason. If fear of the lord, as Hegel says, is the

9
Johannes Heinrichs, Die Logik der “Phänomenologie des Geistes” (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974),
189f.

110
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

beginning of wisdom, then respect for and obedience to the law is a further
step away from willfulness towards the respect for reason itself.

Language as the existence of Spirit

I think it is possible to discern a rudimentary philosophy of language in the

Phenomenology, one that focuses on the performative and pragmatic
aspects of language. The notion of spirit was introduced in chapter IV as an
I that is We and a We that is I. Later on in the text Hegel states that
language is “the existence of spirit”—das Dasein des Geistes—or that
language is “self-consciousness existing for others” (§652; 478). Further-
more: “The I that utters itself is heard or perceived; it is an infection in
which it has immediately passed into unity with those for whom it is a real
existence, and is a universal self-consciousness” (§508; 376). Universal self-
consciousness here is the name for the We in the formula: I that is We and
We that is I. Thus, the I that is We comes into existence in language
(although not only in language).
Now let us turn to chapter VI.B, “Self-Alienated Spirit,” or to be more
precise, the subchapter called “Culture and its Realm of Actuality”
(VI.B.I.a). This chapter presents or at least alludes to the historical develop-
ments in France from late feudalism via absolute monarchy to the world of
the French Revolution. It portrays how the proud warrior nobility becomes
a fawning and flattering court aristocracy, and how the center of gravity in
society shifts from state power to wealth. Hegel here presents a number of
asymmetrical relations of recognition to which correspond different forms
of language use. Consciousness is here literally doing things with words.
The general lesson to be learned seems to be that language can be used both
to stabilize and to undermine a social order, that language can be a conser-
vative just as well as a subversive force in society.
a) First we have the feudal lord and his vassals: on the surface, a heroism
of mute service or the giving of advice for the general good. This is
according to Hegel the language of unselfish advice. However, under the
surface we find a being for-itself, a willfulness that hasn’t renounced itself.
b) Next we have the absolute monarch and his courtiers: here we find the
language of flattery. The flattering courtiers surround the monarch, eager to
tell him that he is the incomparable one. But, according to Hegel, the real
basis of state power is about to pass over into wealth. The monarch becomes

111
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

nothing but an empty name, dependent upon wealthy societal fractions and
interest groups.
c) Next comes the rich man and his clients: here we have the language of
ignoble or base flattery. Wealth has now become the center of gravity in
society and “self-consciousness has its own language in dealing with wealth”
(§520; 384). The language of base flattery praises and takes possession of
what it knows to be without any intrinsic being (money as worthless in
itself, but a means to everything).
d) Finally, in the shape of Rameau’s nephew (taken from Diderot’s
dialogue with the same name), who is a kind of Bohemian and social
parasite, we find the language of disunity and disruption.10 The language of
disruption represents a rebellion against the power of wealth. For the
nephew nothing is holy anymore—neither state power nor wealth; the
nephew speaks the language of inversion and subversion or the language of
wit. This is a use of language that is found in a society that is on the verge of
a revolutionary upheaval. The language that turns everything upside down
precedes and foreshadows the world being turned upside down.
Hegel in this chapter of the Phenomenology draws attention to the social
uses of language. It is of crucial importance not only what is said, but also
how it is said, why it is said, and to whom it is said.11 To different social
relations correspond different uses of language.
In the chapter “Religion in the Form of Art” (VII.B) we also find a kind
of phenomenology of different uses of language12. What Hegel discusses in
this chapter is the Greek experience of art as the highest expression of the
divine. In this chapter, language plays the role of bringing the human and
the divine closer to each another; we are witnessing the progressive
humanization of the divine. The following uses of language can be
distinguished, beginning already in the previous chapter on natural religion
(VII.A):

– the enigmatic language of the hieroglyphs

– the alien language of the oracle
– the captivating language of the hymn

10
The manuscript to Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew was found in St. Petersburg several
years after the death of its author, and it was translated into German by Goethe in 1805.
11
Cf. Daniel J. Cook, Language in the Philosophy of Hegel (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 86.
12
Ibid., 102ff. See also Günther Wohlfart, Der spekulative Satz: Bemerkungen zum Begriff
der Spekulation bei Hegel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981), 168.

112
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

– the intoxicating language of the Bacchant

– the retelling language of the epic
– the dialogical language of the tragedy and the comedy

Some of these uses of language are deficient because they are not
understandable to everyone, being either a privileged wisdom like the alien
language of the oracle, or an unarticulated expressiveness like the
intoxicating language of the Bacchant. Furthermore, the retelling language
of the epic is deficient because it tells about things that have happened in
the past. The divine is here and now, in the sense of forever, and it speaks a
language that everyone understands. The dialogical language of the tragedy
and the comedy approximates this. At the same time, comedy represents
the disenchantment of the Greek religion of art. Its truth is to be found in
the proposition: “the Self is absolute Being” (§748; 545). Behind the mask of
the comedian, self-consciousness finds only itself.
All through the Phenomenology Hegel seems to be struggling to find a
language that is adequate to conceptual thought. Language is the existence of
spirit, of spirit in the sense of an I that is We and a We that is I. Towards the
end of the chapter on spirit (VI.C.c) we find the remarkable sentence: “The
word of reconciliation is the objectively existent Spirit […], a reciprocal
recognition which is absolute Spirit” (§670; 493). We have traversed a long
road from the utterances of sense-certainty (I): “Here is a tree” and “Now is
night,” to the word of reconciliation that is absolute spirit. In the following
chapter on religion (VII), consciousness then experiences what absolute
spirit is: the self is absolute being, and its reversal, the absolute being is self.
Hegel’s remarks on language in the main text of the Phenomenology
continue in the preface in the discussion of what is called the speculative
sentence or proposition (cf. §58–§66; 56–62).

Spheres of experience

Returning to the question of the structure of the book, I would like to

suggest that the Phenomenology is structured by way of a number of spheres
of experience that consciousness traverses on its way towards absolute
knowing (VIII), towards the standpoint of Hegel’s system. More precisely,
consciousness traverses the following spheres:

113
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

– the experience of something other than itself (I-III / A)

– the experience of itself in opposition to all otherness (IV / B)
– the experience of itself in the world (V / C.AA)
– the experience of itself in history (VI / BB)
– the experience of itself as absolute in the form of picture-
thinking (VII / CC)

These different spheres of experience present answers to the question of

what consciousness knows

– when it knows something other than itself (I-III / A)

– when it knows itself in opposition to all otherness (IV / B)
– when it knows itself in the world (V / C.AA)
– when it knows itself in history (VI / BB)
– when it knows itself as absolute in the form of picture-
thinking (VII / CC)

This is a structuring of the Phenomenology primarily based on the

dialectical movement of consciousness itself. Its point of departure is
neither of the two divisions of content—neither the one with Roman
numerals, nor the one with capital letters. I am not saying that it solves all
the problems related to the difficult question of the structure of the
Phenomenology, but it is my best attempt.

The infinite judgment

What Hegel calls the infinite judgment seems to play an important role in
the Phenomenology. The infinite judgment is, so to speak, a failed
judgment, a judgment that fails in one of two forms: either in the form of an
empty tautology (“the particular is particular”) or in the form of an absurd
judgment (“spirit is not red, yellow, sour, etc.”). The examples are Hegel’s
own.13 The first form Hegel calls a positive-infinite judgment, the second he
calls a negative-infinite judgment. In the Science of Logic we read: “in the
negative-infinite judgment the difference [between the subject and the
predicate] is so to speak too big for it to remain a judgment, the subject and

13
G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik II, Werke 6 (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main,
1969), 324–325.

114
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

the predicate have no positive relation at all to one another; in the positive-
infinite judgment on the other hand we have only the identity [between the
subject and the predicate], and because of the complete lack of a difference
it is no longer a judgment”14.
In the Phenomenology, the infinite judgment appears in the following
two forms: as an empty tautology: I = I, and as the reification of self-
consciousness: the self is a thing. In both of these forms the opposition of
consciousness is not overcome but has collapsed into either a positive-
infinite judgment (I = I) or a negative-infinite judgment (self = thing). In
the first case, the difference between the subject and the predicate is non-
existent; in the second case, the difference is too large.
It is my contention that the infinite judgment primarily makes its
appearance at certain turning points in the Phenomenology, or to be more
precise, marks the transition from one sphere of experience to another. The
infinite judgment represents the coming to an end or the closing of a certain
sphere of experience and at the same time the opening up of a new sphere
of experience.
Let me give a few examples. Towards the end of chapter III, “Force and
the Understanding,” we find a positive-infinite judgment: I = I, and a
transition to another sphere of experience is made. The infinite judgment is
here reached through the notion of infinity: “Since this Notion is an object
for consciousness, the latter is consciousness of a difference that is no less
immediately cancelled; consciousness is for its own self, it is a distin-
guishing of that which contains no difference, or self-consciousness” (§164;
134). Towards the end of chapter IV we find a negative-infinite judgment,
the reification of self-consciousness: the self is a thing, or as Hegel
formulates it in a later chapter: “The Unhappy Self-Consciousness renounced
its independence, and struggled to make its being-for-itself into a Thing”
(§344; 260, cf. §229; 175f.). And towards the end of chapter V, in the
discussion of the matter-in-hand or die Sache selbst, we find again a
positive-infinite judgment (cf. §420; 311).
However, sometimes the infinite judgment appears also within a certain
sphere of experience, for example in the chapter “Observing Reason” (V.A).
The last shape of observing reason is phrenology, i.e. the attempt to answer
the question what the I or self is by studying the shape of the skull, a
pseudo-science whose wisdom is summarized in the sentence: “the being of

14
Ibid., 325.

115
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

Spirit is a bone” or “the self is a Thing” (§344–5; 260). This is a crude

reification of the self, a negative-infinite judgment, and consciousness
passes over into rational self-consciousness trying to actualize itself through
its own activity (V.B).
As to the reification of self-consciousness, there is another side of the
coin. This is the speculative truth contained in the statement: the self is
thinghood, ultimately the self is absolute being, just as well as its inversion:
the absolute being is self.

Recognition

Finally, I come to the theme of recognition in the Phenomenology. My

argument here is to begin with the idea that recognition is a continuous theme
in the book, and not something that plays a role only in the chapter on self-
consciousness (IV). In fact, the word Anerkennung and its different forms are
most frequent in the last chapter on spirit (VI.C.c).15 Thus, Vittorio Hösle has
argued that beside the goal of overcoming the opposition of consciousness,
there is a second goal for the development in the Phenomenology, namely “the
overcoming of unjust, unreasonable, asymmetrical relations of inter-
subjectivity,”16 i.e. one-sided forms of recognition. How do the two goals of the
Phenomenology relate to each another? One way to answer this question is:
The first goal can be reached only by way of reaching the second. In order to
overcome the opposition of consciousness asymmetrical relations of inter-
subjectivity must be overcome.
Hegel introduces the notion of mutual recognition at the beginning of
chapter IV.A, in terms of a double movement of two self-consciousnesses:
“Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands
of the other, and therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other
does the same. Action by one side only would be useless because what is to
happen can only be brought about by both” (§182; 146–7).
The struggle that takes place in “Lordship and Bondage” is, as mentioned
before, a struggle between two willful self-consciousnesses. However, no
mutual recognition can be achieved on the basis of willfulness. Willfulness

15
Joseph Gauvin, in collaboration with Charles Bailly et al., Wortindex zur Phänomenologie
des Geistes (Bonn: Bouvier, 1977).
16
Vittorio Hösle, Hegels System: Der Idealismus der Subjektivität und das Problem der
Intersubjektivität, 2 vol. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), 383–384.

116
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

must therefore be broken down. This is the lesson from chapter IV.A. Thus,
we have to find a more solid foundation or base for a mutual recognition. In
chapter IV.B this base is sought in thought, in chapter V in reason, and in
chapter VI in institutionalized reason. As thinking beings, we are all alike;
thought is so to speak a common ground for all of us, an element of inter-
subjectivity. Thought as reason is no longer standing over against reality,
but is “the certainty of consciousness that it is all reality” (§233; 179), that
reason is to be found in reality. Finally, spirit is institutionalized reason:
customs and laws that are valid for all of us. It all turns on realizing a certain
kind of like-mindedness.17 Like-mindedness, among other things, means
having the same standards of rationality, of what is to count as true and
false, right and wrong, just and unjust, etc. Achieving such a like-
mindedness means, from the side of the individual, being socialized into a
certain world, and, from the side of mankind, a long and winding historical
process of formation. This like-mindedness has its seat in thought, in
reason, in spirit as institutionalized reason, and in spirit unfolding in
history as the history of institutionalized reason. What consciousness
experiences in chapter VI is essentially that institutionalized reason has a
history, a history that takes the reader from the Greek city-state, via the
world of culture, to the postrevolutionary Europe of Hegel’s time. At the
end of chapter VI, we reach an intersubjectivity that is free of asymmetrical
relations. I quote the following sentence once again: “The word of
reconciliation is the objectively existent Spirit […], a reciprocal recognition
which is absolute Spirit” (§670; 493). Now consciousness has experienced or
at least caught a glimpse of what spirit is: an intersubjectivity free from
asymmetrical relations.18
What is still missing is universal self-consciousness, or the community, as
a mediating third element: realizing the formula I = We = I (Thou). This
mediating third is first the religious community (VII.C), and then the
philosophical community (VIII).19 Once again it is relevant to refer to

17
I pick up this notion from Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-
Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 146f, 155, 160.
18
Remember Hegel’s announcement at the beginning of chapter IV: “What still lies
ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is” (§177; 145).
19
A deficient form of community appeared already in the chapter on conscience
(VI.C.c), a community of moral geniuses whose “divine worship” is “the utterance of the
community concerning its own Spirit” (§656; 481–2). Hegel here probably has in mind
the romantic coterie at Jena in the late 19th century, which to him represented an inward
flight from reality.

117
 CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN

language: “Language only emerges as the middle term, mediating between

independent and acknowledged self-consciousnesses” (§653; 479). I think
that Hegel, as he saw it, standing at the dawn of a new epoch, held the very
optimistic conviction that the philosophical community is not necessarily a
community of the few, but that every creature endowed with the capacity of
thought, endowed with reason, can take part in it. The following quote from
the preface points in this direction: “We must hold to the conviction that it
is the nature of truth to prevail when its time has come, and that it appears
only when this time has come, and therefore never appears prematurely,
nor finds a public not ripe to receive it” (§71; 66). The very optimistic
message of the Phenomenology seems to be that everyone can climb up on
Hegel’s ladder to the realm of philosophy and take part in the philosophical
community: a potentially unlimited community of communication speaking
the language of conceptual thought.
To summarize, my main points on the topic of recognition are:
1. Recognition is a continuous theme in the Phenomenology, not
something that plays a role only in chapter IV.A.
2. The theme of recognition is closely related to the definition of spirit
that Hegel introduces in chapter IV: I that is We and We that is I.
3. There is an interconnection between the theme of recognition and the
rudimentary philosophy of language to be found in the Phenomenology.
4. The themes of recognition, spirit and language are essential to the
Phenomenology also as an epistemological project, as a social and historical
epistemology.20

Conclusion

Two hundred years have gone by since the publication of the Phenom-
enology, and we are still struggling to unravel its mysteries. Rather than

20
Here it must be said that the last chapter of the Phenomenology, on absolute knowing
(VIII), does not lend itself very well to an intersubjectivist reading. The overcoming of
the opposition of consciousness now seems to be disconnected from the topic of mutual
recognition. Hegel, according to Habermas, in the last instance favors a kind of know-
ledge which is supposed “to be categorically superior to all knowledge emerging from
the co-operative quest for truth of participants in the rational discourses of a self-
justifying culture.” See Jürgen Habermas, “From Kant to Hegel and Back Again: The
Move Towards Detranscendentalization,” in European Journal of Philosophy, 1999, 7:2,
148.

118
 HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLGY OF SPIRIT

having presented clear-cut answers and definite solutions, I have drawn

attention to some problems that pertain to the Phenomenology and hinted
at some possible lines of interpretation. The Phenomenology is certainly
one of the most charismatic texts in the history of philosophy. Therefore, I
am quite convinced that in two hundred years, if there still is human life on
earth, people will be sitting in small circles all over the globe, trying to come
to grips with the problems of the Phenomenology. What about sense-
certainty? What about lordship and bondage? What about the unhappy
consciousness? And, last but not least, what about absolute knowing?

119
 Hegel’s Anomalous Functionalism
STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE

The section in the Phenomenology of Spirit on “observing reason” is one of

the least studied parts of the work, which is a pity because it contains some
things very pertinent to contemporary philosophical concerns. The only
passage I will treat in any detail here is the discussion concerning the
observation of biological organisms (§§254–297),1 but I will start with a few
remarks concerning the place of observing reason within the Pheno-
menology as a whole, and of the observation of organic life within observing
reason.
“Observing Reason” is the first main section of the reason chapter. In
Hegel’s formal scheme, the chapter on reason has a double numbering that
may seem confusing at first, but on closer inspection reveals itself to be
entirely logical. The preceding chapters, on consciousness and self-
consciousness, are called A and B, respectively. As Hegel’s basic progression
is always through triads, one expects the following chapter to be C, and then
for the numbering to start again on a new level. In keeping with this, the
two chapters following reason, on spirit and religion, are numbered BB and
CC, and one would expect them to be preceded by a chapter AA. Between
these two series we find the chapter on reason, and, lo and behold, it is
called C AA. The only natural reading of this is that reason has a double
role in the dialectical progression: it is both the last stage of the first triad
and the first stage of the second.2

1
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is cited in the translation by A. V Miller (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), with paragraph numbers.
2
As Robert Pippin pointed out at the Translating Hegel symposium, there is a problem
reconciling this analysis with the fact that chapter CC is immediately followed by the
final chapter DD, on absolute knowing. My best answer is that this is a kind of mistake,
probably reflecting a genuine uncertainty on Hegel’s part about what to do with the final
chapter. If absolute knowing really is the final stage of the dialectic, it should be the third

121
 STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE

This is also reasonable with regard to the content. In the overall flow of
the Phenomenology, the dialectical waltz is syncopated by another rhythm
in two-step, moving back and forth between objectivity and subjectivity.
Sense-certainty takes the world as naively given and itself as pure registra-
tion, perception concentrates on the contribution of the subject, while the
understanding rediscovers itself in objective reality. On the next level up,
consciousness as a whole is concerned with objectivity, while self-con-
sciousness is concerned with the subject—in reason, self and world are
reunited as self-consciousness rediscovers itself in the world, in the form of
an object. But precisely in virtue of this, reason is also ready to play the role
of the first, objective stage in the next large triad where spirit represents the
subjective pole and religion combines the two in a spiritualized rendition of
the world.
The same principles apply to the disposition of lower levels, within the
collection of collections of Chinese boxes that is the Phenomenology of
Spirit. Sense-certainty, for example, begins with naive objectivism, goes on
to naive subjectivism and ends up with a synthetic unity that is the
foundation of the first, objective, stage of perception. According to the same
pattern, reason itself has three parts, and observing reason is the first one,
concerned with reason as manifested in the object, as observed by reason.
Put in another way, observing reason is concerned with science, as the most
sophisticated attempt to capture reality in entirely objective terms.3 And, of
course, observing reason again has three main sections that relate in the
same way, concerned with the observation of physical nature, with the
observation of the psyche, and with the psycho-physical relation between
the body and the mind, respectively.
The passage about living organisms, in turn, is situated at the end of the
discussion of nature, just before the transition to the observation of self-
consciousness. Natural as this may seem from a modern point of view, it is
not a self-evident choice as far as Hegel is concerned. Living things are
intermediate between inorganic nature and consciousness. In De anima
Aristotle treats plants and animals as having souls, in virtue of the
functional organization that is their defining characteristic for Hegel as well,

stage of a triad, but religion already occupies the only available slot. As it is, I think the
final chapter is best regarded as belonging with the preface, as a comment from the
outside rather than as a proper part of development of the spirit—it is really an epilogue.
3
Here I use the word science in an ordinary way, of course, and not as a translation of
Hegel’s “Wissenschaft,” which he uses for the highest form of philosophy.

122
 HEGEL’S ANOMALOUS FUNCTIONALISM

and the main previous discussion of living things in the Phenomenology is

located at the beginning of “Self-Consciousness” rather than at the end of
“Consciousness.” Had he been less strongly attached to his formal scheme,
Hegel would, perhaps, have treated life as a separate stage between
inorganic nature and self-consciousness. As it is, he hesitates about where it
belongs, but he is clearly more interested in the differences between living
things and inorganic nature than in their similarities.
What gives Hegel’s discussion of science its contemporary interest is
largely his thorough anti-reductionism, and the fact that he opposes
reductionism for conceptual rather than for metaphysical reasons. In
keeping with this, the main point of his treatment of biological categories is
his argument that they are not reducible to the categories of physics and
chemistry. More precisely, he argues that there can be no proper scientific
laws connecting the two domains—as hinted in the title of this article, his
argument to that effect bears a certain resemblance to Donald Davidson’s
argument for the anomalousness of the mental.

Nature

Observing reason as a whole is concerned with the nature of scientific

concepts and their relation to scientific laws. The beginning of the scientific
attitude is the naive conviction that the world itself is reasonable and that
you can find reason in the world by just paying attention—i.e., by
observation. In a way, we seem to be back at the level of sense-certainty,
where consciousness appears to itself as doing no more in the acquisition of
knowledge than registering the way things are. But in truth, we are at a
higher level where reason is in charge and controls what it shall experience.
The active role of reason in the epistemic process is deepened as we go
along. At the first, taxonomic, stage it goes no further than to classify
particular phenomena in general terms. The desire for knowledge is
expressed through the effort to describe everything there is, to extend what
we know, through voyages of discovery and ever more powerful
instruments of observation. Soon, however, the spontaneous will to chart
the unknown and describe what one finds in nature starts to run into
problems. It is easy enough, says Hegel, to see that there is something
special about the elephant, the oak or the substance of gold, but when we
push further and try to distinguish genera and species in what soon

123
 STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE

threatens to become a chaos of animals, plants, and natural substances, we

loose our foothold and find it increasingly difficult to draw the line between
what are really separate species and what is mere individual variation. The
solution is to create systematic taxonomies, built on unified criteria, but this
already implies that reason abandons its passivity and increases its own
command:

Through this distinction between what is essential and what is

unessential, the Notion rises above the dispersion of the sensuous, and
cognition thus makes it clear that it is just as essentially concerned with
its own self as with things. (§246)

Are the kinds that we discern, and the criteria we employ, grounded in the
nature of things or are they just tools manufactured by us? As usual, Hegel
distinguishes different grades and levels in this respect, before he connects
the classifications most worthy of being taken as both real and reasonable to
the concept of law.
Easiest of natural things to demarcate by essential characteristics are,
according to Hegel, animals, and the reason for this is that animals divide
themselves into kinds. The individual animal upholds and defends its own
identity against external attack—by a somewhat dubious argument, Hegel
draws the conclusion that they are best classified by the tools they use for
this purpose, i.e., by the shape of teeth and claws. Plants are lower on the
ladder of conceptuality and do not sustain their individuality in the same
active way—they stand, says Hegel, “on the boundary-line of individuality.”
But in the interest of reproduction they uphold at least one essential
distinction, namely the distinction according to sex, and so we classify them
by their reproductive organs.
While the details of this account are decidedly passé, the underlying
point is important. There are no real individuals in inorganic nature, new
things can be fashioned at will by composition or partition, and in many
cases the actual demarcation between different things is obviously artificial
and imposed by the observer. And the higher degree of individuality of
animals and plants is connected to their more intimate relation to
conceptuality—the animal does not need to wait for an observer to be
classified, it incorporates its concept and itself recognizes its kin. In
inorganic nature, on the contrary, not even the boundaries between

124
 HEGEL’S ANOMALOUS FUNCTIONALISM

different substances are absolute: in chemical reactions given substances are

transformed into new ones with unpredictable features.
Reason looks for what is constant in experience but cannot find it on the
level of observable properties, because the nature of things is to change.
What first appears as an essential property of an abiding thing reveals itself
as a fleeting stage of a process. What is constant must be sought on another
level, in the laws that govern change, but the search for natural laws will
force a decisive change in the formation of scientific concepts.
At the outset, observing reason takes it for granted that laws shall be
accessible to direct observation, that they shall be given as correlations
between observable properties. But it soon runs into two sorts of trouble
with this approach. First, purely empirical correlations are never truly
universal, they always admit of exceptions and special cases, that we in turn
want to understand and submit to strict laws. Second, even if an empirical
correlation should happen to be universally valid, it lacks the necessity of a
true law. The necessity of a true law stems from its conceptual form rather
than from empirical observation, which by itself can reach no further than
to contingent probabilities.
So what is it, according to Hegel, which confers necessity on a true law? It
has to do with the relation that reason instinctively seeks to establish between
what is given in experience and the conceptual structures it applies to it.

That a stone falls, is true for consciousness because in its heaviness the
stone has in and for itself that essential relation to the earth which is
expressed in falling. Consciousness thus has in experience the being of
the law, but it has, too, the law in the form of a Notion [Begriff]; and it is
only because of the two aspects together that the law is true for
consciousness. The law is valid as a law because it is manifested in the
world of appearance, and is also in its own self a Notion. (§250)

The stone falls because it is heavy, but heaviness is nothing but a disposition
to fall. It sounds as if Hegel thinks of natural laws as analytic, as conceptual
truths of a kind, and so he does, to some extent. The terms of a scientific
theory are defined in relation to each other, and the laws of the theory
express the relevant relations. Take the concept of mass, to stay close to the
example in the quote. Mass is measured by weighing, which in itself is a
relational procedure—as demonstrated by the use of scales to establish
sameness of mass—and its role in Newton’s mechanics is defined by the

125
 STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE

laws of inertia and gravitation. Would something that did not obey these
laws really be mass?4
(The concept of mass is also a good example of the important
phenomenon that Hegel calls “reflection.” The mass of a thing is essentially
a relation that it has to other things, but it appears to us as a property of the
thing itself: the relation is “reflected” back into it. Unpacking such reflected
relations is one of the main tasks of the Phenomenology.)
The urge to transform empirical correlations into conceptually grounded
laws is, according to Hegel, built into the praxis of science, for example in
the use of controlled experiments, with the aim of purifying proposed laws
from accidental circumstances and reach the really essential factors.

The inner significance of this investigation is to find the pure conditions

of the law, and this means nothing else [...] than to raise the law into the
form of Notion, and to free its moments completely from being tied to a
specific being. (§251)

This is a first point where Hegel’s view bears a striking relation to

Davidson’s. The idea of a reciprocal relation between laws and the concepts
used to formulate them plays a key role in Davidson’s argument for the
non-reducibility of the mental, which relies on a specific account of
conceptual holism, according to which the physical and the mental
constitute separate conceptual totalities, held together by separate unifying
principles. In the case of the mental domain, the relevant unity is
constituted by the principles of rationality, as reflected in the principle of
charity, while the physical domain is held together by “constitutive laws” for
which one should not “force the decision” whether they are analytic or
synthetic—Davidson even uses the term “synthetic a priori” for such laws.5

4
Thomas Kuhn, who views the relation between concepts and theories in science in a
similar way, has famously argued that there is no contradiction between the theories of
Newton and Einstein, because they do not use the same concept of mass: for Newton
gravitational and inertial mass are the very same thing, while they are different quantities
in relativity theory.
5
D. Davidson, “Mental Events,” in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980), 221.

126
 HEGEL’S ANOMALOUS FUNCTIONALISM

Living things

The next step is to go from inorganic to organic nature. As we saw, non-

living things, according to Hegel, have no real individuality—for a stone,
there are no immanent criteria of identity that define the border between
transformation and annihilation. A living thing, on the contrary,
incorporates the law of its own development, it exists in the form of a law-
governed process and preserves itself through change.
One has to remember, of course, that Hegel was writing before Darwin,
and at the beginning of modern science, before the softening of the borders
between physics, chemistry, and biology. His worldview was dominated by
the ontological hierarchy that he, by and large, inherited from Aristotle.
There are distinct levels in nature, which differ not only in conceptual
complexity but also in value: the living is more valuable than inorganic
nature, conscious life has more value than organisms without conscious-
ness, and so on. The relations between different levels are always at the
center of Hegel’s attention but there is no reduction: each level has
emergent properties that could not be predicted on the basis of lower
levels—this goes for chemistry as well as for biology.
The essential characteristic of biological organisms is their finality, i.e.,
that they are susceptible to functional or teleological explanation. The focus
of Hegel’s discussion is the nature of functional laws and the relation of
functional organization to inorganic nature, to the body and to the physical
environment of the organism.
He starts out with a discussion of correlations between features of
organisms and general characteristics of their milieu—examples are the
thick fur expected of animals in cold climates, and the typical shapes of fish
and birds that seem adapted to life in water and air, respectively. Lacking
the Darwinian framework, Hegel has no theoretical way to treat such
associations, and he brushes them aside as mere empirical correlations,
susceptible to exceptions and lacking the inner necessity of true laws.
A teleological explanation explains why something is or happens in a
certain way by invoking a goal, something that it achieves or to whose
realization it contributes. In the usual case, the goal is beyond the phenom-
enon to be explained, something external to the process whose goal it is—I
take the bus to the airport in order to be in Paris later in the day. But the
basic biological functionality is different, according to Hegel. A biological
organism is its own telos and creates itself only in the sense that it preserves

127
 STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE

itself, recreating what it already is. Hegel associates this kind of self-relation
to self-consciousness, and from a philosophical perspective we can see the
living thing as an incarnated concept. But this conception is beyond
observing reason, which is bound to treat the relation between the function
and the organism as a connection between two things, a correlation to be
observed.

In this way, the organism appears to the observing consciousness as a

relation of two fixed moments in the form of immediate being—of an
antithesis whose two sides, on the one hand, appear to be given to it in
observation, and on the other hand, as regards their content, express the
antithesis of the organic Notion of End [Zweckbegriff] and actuality
[Wirklichkeit]; but as the Notion as such is effaced therein, the antithesis
is expressed in an obscure and superficial way, in which thought has
sunk to the level of picture-thinking [Vorstellen]. Thus we see the
Notion taken to mean roughly the inner, and actuality the outer and
their relation produces the law that the outer is the expression of the
inner. (§262)

It is worth noting the word “roughly” in this passage. The opposition

between the inner and the outer is invoked many times in the Phenom-
enology, but always accompanied by critical reflections. We first meet it in
the section on force and the understanding, as a way of thinking about the
relation between the super-sensible world and the world of appearance, and
it recurs as a way of viewing the relation between consciousness and the
body. In each case, Hegel argues that the idea of a relation between two
independent entities is ultimately untenable.
The biological functions that Hegel uses as examples are “sensibility,”
“irritability,” and “reproduction.” The choice of these three goes back to
Aristotle’s discussion of the basic functions of the soul in De anima.
Aristotle identifies the mental with the biologically functional, and ascribes
“souls” to plants and animals, not in the sense of having consciousness, but,
precisely, in the sense of having certain types of functional organization.
The “reproductive soul” is common to plants and animals, and amounts to
the capacity to reproduce, i.e., to grow and procreate. What sets animals
apart from plants is that they also have the capacities of perception and
movement—it is the latter faculty that Hegel refers to as “irritability.”6

6
As Hegel himself points out, the ensuing discussion is primarily relevant to animals,
rather than to living things in general.

128
 HEGEL’S ANOMALOUS FUNCTIONALISM

Hegel’s first question is about the relation between the function and the
biological structure that we take to be its organ or carrier—for example the
relation between sensibility and the sensory nervous system or between
irritability and the motor system. How can we observe such a relation? The
metaphor of an outer and an inner already seems to imply that the game is
lost, for what does it mean to be “inner” here except to be inaccessible to
observation? To be empirically correlated with the outer, the inner must
already be observable, it must, in Hegel’s terms, itself have an external shape
(Gestalt):

We have now to see what shape the being of inner and outer each has.
The inner itself must have an outer being and a shape, just as much as
the outer as such; for it is an object, or is itself posited in the form of
being, and as present for observation. (§264)

So what is the outer aspect of a function, its observable Gestalt? It is, of

course, the functional behavior, what Hegel calls a “doing” (Tun). A law
that connects function and structure ultimately regards the relation between
the activity of the organism and its “ruhendes Sein,” but the conception of
such a law gives rise to new problems, akin to those that Davidson points
out with regard to the possibility of strict psycho-physical laws.
The functional capacities belong to the organism as a whole, ultimately
serving its self-reproduction, and they also form an integrated totality.
Particular capacities, like sensibility or irritability, are dependent moments
of this totality: there can be no sensibility without irritability, says Hegel, or
the reverse, and there is even a necessary correspondence between the two,
implying that an organism cannot have “more” of one capacity without
having more of the other. Why would that be so?
Sensibility is the capacity to register differences in the environment,
while irritability is the capacity to react to them. To have a high degree of
sensibility is to be able to discriminate subtle differences between stimuli.
But what does it mean to say that an organism itself recognizes a difference,
that two stimuli are different not only for us but for the organism itself? It is
obviously not sufficient that its sensory apparatus reacts differently to them,
i.e., occupies states that we, as external observers, can discriminate—in that
sense a stone, for example, would have a subtle capacity to register
temperature differences in its environment, but there is presumably no

129
 STAFFAN CARLSHAMRE

temptation for us to ascribe the capacity to discriminate hot and cold to the
stone itself.
The natural suggestion is that the organism discriminates between
different stimuli by reacting differently to them, or at least by being able to
react differently—there is a conceptual connection between its sensory
repertoire and its behavioral repertoire. The same thing can be argued from
the opposite direction: if we ascribe a complex repertoire of behaviors to an
organism, we implicitly ascribe to it representational capacities of
corresponding subtlety—the difference between goal-directed behavior and
just being moved around, like a stone, implies the capacity to recognize
when to start and when to end.
But is this not just to postpone the problem—what makes two reactions
different, apart from the possibility of an external observer to tell them
apart? Presumably it has to do with some difference that they make with
regard to the self-preservation of the organism, with its capacity for
reproduction. When the organism correlates differences in stimulations
with differences in behavior in a way that furthers its survival and
reproduction, we have grounds to say that these are differences for the
organism, and not just for us. With this, we have arrived at Hegel’s
conclusion: that the different functional capacities are abstract moments of
a conceptually intertwined totality.
The important contrast is between being an abstract moment of a
totality, in this sense, and being a concrete part of something, in the way
that the sensory nervous system is a part of the body. While the sensory
function is conceptually intertwined with the other life-functions, the
different parts of the body are conceptually independent of each other. One
can illustrate the point with the help of Aristotle’s famous example of the
eye: there are no anatomical properties that in themselves make something
an eye; something is an eye only as a functioning part of a living body. But
to view something as a living body, in this sense, is to make a conceptual
jump from the anatomical description to the functional, to see what the
organism does in the light of its end, self-preservation.
And this also completes the analogy with Davidson’s argument for the
anomalousness of the mental. It is the fact that functional capacities
constitute a conceptually linked totality of a specific kind that makes them
irreducible to phenomena that do not belong to the relevant circle.

130
 Hegel and Exposure
VICTORIA FARELD

One of the major achievements of the Phenomenology of Spirit is not only,

as Marx said, that Hegel grasped man’s historical, self-transformative
nature—that man is the product of his own work.1 What’s remarkable in
Hegel’s work is also the idea that man’s independence presupposes his
dependence, which is suggested by his notion of recognition (Anerkennung).
The desire for recognition describes a process where one appears as a self
only when being recognized by others. Hence, to appear as an independent
self one has to stand in relation to what is other than oneself, one has to be
dependent. This is a major insight conveyed by the Phenomenology of Spirit,
with consequences, I contend, that even today remain to be worked through.
One way of trying to consider what it might mean to be involved in
relations of dependence in order to attain independence, is to understand
the nature of this dependence as, I will suggest here, a human condition of
exposure. I will read the Hegelian dialectic as a series of such exposings.
The complex relations of interdependence in the Phenomenology of Spirit
invite various interpretations. Indeed, the notorious struggle between lord
and bondsman seems to be inexhaustible when it comes to generating new
readings. Beginning right after Hegel’s death, every generation has had its
own versions of his dialectic, adapted to tackle the urgent issues of its own
time.2 One of many actualizations of the Hegelian struggle for recognition is
to be found in Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s Les condamnés

1
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole,” in
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin Milligan (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1959 [1844]), 165.
2
For an account of Hegelianism, see for instance John Edward Toews, Hegelianism: The
Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University
Press 1980); Wolfgang Essbach, Die Junghegelianer: Soziologie einer Intellektuellengruppe
(Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1988).

131
 VICTORIA FARELD

de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth), from 1961. In this preface, Sartre
uses Hegel’s idea of interdependence, which characterizes the relation
between lord and bondsman, and transforms it into a political appeal to
Europeans to listen to the testimonies of colonized people, because, as he
says: “It’s enough that they show us what we have made of them, for us to
realize what we have made of ourselves.”3 This understanding of the
constitutive relations of interdependence establishes dialectic as a re-
bounding movement, suggesting that the key to my self-knowledge is in the
hands of the other. But it also, and more interestingly, says something else:
As I am essentially dependent on the other, the denial of the other is at the
same time a denial of myself.
However, as we know, Sartre himself was primarily interested in trying
to overcome this dependence, by seeing the struggle for recognition as a
struggle to maintain an exclusive subject position.4 He didn’t acknowledge
that the flipside of this fear of the other—of being devoured by the other or
reduced to an object—is indeed the fear of oneself as exposed.
Understanding interdependence in the Phenomenology of Spirit as a
condition of exposure will allow me to reflect upon the implications of
being ex-posed, of being posed outside oneself in the constitution of oneself
through others. This implies that there is vulnerability in the very formation
of the self, that one is constitutively dependent on others and thus not fully
apparent or accessible to oneself, as part of one’s very possibility of
emerging as an “I.”
Moreover, understanding this dependence as exposure will allow me to
shift focus from recognition to recognizability, that is, to the question of
who is recognizable as someone to be recognized. This involves a shift of
focus from the relation between self and other to the social space and the
practices governing this space, in which people appear as recognizable to
each other. If we focus on recognizability as an essential part of the social
process of recognition, the following questions appear: How do humans
beings become recognizable? Under which conditions, under which social
norms, is an individual recognizable as someone to be recognized as a
unique individual? And what are the mechanisms that make some people
unrecognizable? I will end with an argument for the contemporary relevance

3
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface,” in Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans.
Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press 1963 [1961]), 12.
4
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology,
trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library 1956 [1943]), 242–243.

132
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

of a certain way of thinking dialectically, by exploring the condition of what I

call being made dialectically redundant—a situation where some people
appear as non-recognizable, by being dialectically abandoned.
What interests me with the question of exposure in the Phenomenology
of Spirit is therefore, one might say, how we can translate a certain way of
thinking—which in my view is deeply Hegelian—into a contemporary
language, and make it into an interpretative tool in contemporary philo-
sophical debate. What I am proposing is not a reading of Hegel that is
attentive to the historical contexts of his philosophy, but rather one that
actively seeks other contexts for his ideas.
This means that I have understood translating Hegel in the widest sense
possible. How can we make use of Hegel? What can a way of thinking
dialectically offer us today? In answering these questions, I will partly
depart from Hegel. Translating Hegel will here imply transforming Hegel;
an act by which something is necessarily lost and yet something else is
hopefully gained. In that sense, what I will try to do is itself fairly Hegelian. I
will stick with Hegel by (in a way) leaving him behind, I will be Hegelian by
(in a certain sense) being post-Hegelian, in line with what the German
philosopher Günter Figal has said, that you think better without Hegel by
thinking with him.5

Aristophanes and alienation

I would like to begin this exploration of the exposed self in the

Phenomenology, not with Hegel himself but with Plato, with one of his
dialogues, the Symposium, which provides an interesting starting point for
discussions about exposure and dependence in the Phenomenology of
Spirit.6 In this dialogue, Aristophanes tells a well-known, mythological story
about the essence of love and desire. He traces these phenomena, love and

5
Günter Figal, Für eine Philosophie von Freiheit und Streit: Politik, Ästhetik, Metaphysik
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994), 133.
6
I am indebted here to Jay M. Bernstein, especially to his interpretation of Hegel’s The
Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, in On Christianity: Early Theological Writings, trans. T.
M. Knox (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1948), as an early text that provides an
underlying thought structure for the Phenomenology as well. See Bernstein, “Conscience
and Transgression: The Exemplarity of Tragic Action,” in Gary K. Browning (ed.)
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), and
Bernstein, “Conscience and Transgression: The Persistence of Misrecognition,” Bulletin
of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, vol. 29, 1994.

133
 VICTORIA FARELD

desire, back to the very first people inhabiting the world and what befell
them. The very first men were round, Aristophanes says, their bodies were
circle-formed, and their strength and independence threatened the gods.
The gods, however, didn’t want to kill them, since they needed the sacrifices
and worships from the people in order to be true gods. So, instead of killing
them, Zeus decided to make them weak and dependent, by cutting each one
of them in half. And since then, Aristophanes tells us, we are, each one of
us, still searching for the other part of us, this second half, which was
originally taken away from us. This is, he continues, what love and desire
are all about: a longing to be whole again, to recuperate an original unity.7
Aristophanes’ story is generally read as a description of romantic love,
driven by a desire to fuse with the other and become one, and thus
overcome a condition of alienation by finding oneself again. This inter-
pretation can be compared to a very influential understanding of the
process of alienation running throughout the Phenomenology of Spirit. This
interpretation says that we are to understand the desire that drives history
in the Phenomenology as spirit’s longing for completion, as a process of
recuperating a lost unity. History is spirit (as originally one) alienating,
externalizing, shattering itself, and gradually recollecting itself again, in
order to gain concrete forms through history, and thus realizing itself by
finally reuniting with itself in an absolute unity. Hegel’s famous lines about
spirit as an “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We that is ‘I’”—about becoming an
individual by being part of a community—is understood in a similar way, as
a process of de-alienation, of finding oneself in, and becoming one with,
one’s community.8
In line with this view is an understanding of Hegel’s idealism as a unity
of thought and being. In one of the key passages in the Phenomenology,
Hegel writes that “die Substanz wesentlich Subjekt ist,” about grasping “the
True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.”9 This has been
interpreted as a fusion of reality and consciousness in an all-inclusive
totality, where the subject no longer stands in opposition to the substance
but fuses with it. Thought and world, or thought and being, become one.

7
Plato, Symposium, ed. and trans. C. J. Rowe (Warminster: Aris & Phillips 1998), 189a–
193e.
8
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977), 110; Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Werke vol. 3, eds. Eva Molden-
hauer & Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1993), 145.
9
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 28; Phenomenology of Spirit, 10.

134
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

The pattern is familiar: We start from identity, an identity that constitutes

its difference, but only to return to identity, to a higher form of identity
with difference as part of it.10 Or, we start from unity, we were cut in half,
but only to return to unity.
A common critique of this understanding is that alienation and
difference are nothing but moments to be overcome, as spirit (as well as the
subject) develops through a dialectical transcendence of otherness, and
becomes at home in this otherness by internalizing it, appropriating and
assimilating it, and recognizing itself in it. Hence, difference, according to
this understanding of the Hegelian dialectic, only exists to the extent that it
originates from and returns to identity. This is the well-known criticism
outlined by critics like Adorno, Deleuze, and Lévinas who are very
uncomfortable with a dialectic that can only cope with plurality by sub-
mitting it to identity.11
Let us now return to Aristophanes’ speech. What is truly interesting with
this story, I claim, is that the search for the “perfect” other—which is a
search for oneself, for I am actually looking for (the other half of) myself—is
that it is a never-ending story. I can never find myself, because what I find is
always another, someone who is not me, who is different from me, separated
from me. It is ultimately a story about the impossibility of finding oneself in
the other, about the unbridgeable split that exists between me and the other,
and which exists within me, since a part of me is always already lost.
It is important to emphasize that Aristophanes tells this story from the
point of view of a lost unity. We have never been circle-formed. We have
never been in this mythical unity, for we have always been split from the
very beginning. We know of this unity only from the perspective of the
split. So, what we have is a notion of wholeness and unity as always already
lost to us.
This means, of course, that the desire for fusion with the other—which is
also a way to become one with oneself—can never be satisfied, wholeness

10
Cf. Charles Taylor’s “expressive” interpretation in his Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975), see for instance 59, 107. In relation to recognition, see Robert
Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997),
170, 180–185, 226.
11
Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of a Lecture Course
1965/1966, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity, 2008);
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 2004
[1968]); Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans.
Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1969 [1961]).

135
 VICTORIA FARELD

can never be realized. This interpretation of Aristophanes’ speech can be

compared to an understanding of the Hegelian dialectic, which sets
alienation as one of its permanent and most prominent features. What
drives history in the Phenomenology, in this view, are the constant failures
and repeated attempts to satisfy the desire for completion, and thus the im-
possibility of overcoming alienation.12 Since desire is driven by difference, a
fusion between self and other would be the end of all experiences.
Difference would disappear into sameness and desire would disappear into
status quo. History would indeed end.
If there is no final return to identity in the Phenomenology, the negation
of negation—Aufhebung—is not a restored unity, but rather the return of
the negated.13 Identity is there for us, but only as a unity that is always
already lost, which is the very possibility of our appearing as selves.

Exposure and expropriation in the Phenomenology of Spirit

In the following, I will remain within this second line of interpretation of

the Hegelian dialectic, as I would like to explore the idea of unity as lost, by
suggesting that we understand it in relation to exposure. Since we are
dependent on what is other than ourselves to appear as selves, the unity
which is “I” is always already lost, as a precondition for the self that I am.
Being ex-posed—posed outside of myself—means that I have lost this unity
from the very moment I appear as an “I.” This perspective makes possible,
in my view, a shift of focus from the Hegelian struggle for recognition as an
appropriation of oneself or of the other, to an expropriation of oneself.
In the German noun Eigentum, “property,” we find the adjective eigen—
“proper,” as in its Latin origin, proprietas, from proper, “own.” The word
reveals a connection between ownership and being one’s own, which
characterizes the notion of property that dominates the philosophical
tradition from Locke onwards, where property is linked to the proper
person, proprius. This notion of property, referring to both objects and to
persons, is intimately connected to the idea of freedom as autonomy. Just as

12
Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative, trans. Jason Smith and
Steven Miller (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002 [1997]), 4–7.
13
Cf. Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Hegel in The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of
Political Ontology (New York: Verso 2000), 76–79.

136
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

the utmost property is one’s own person, the ultimate freedom is being in
possession of oneself.14
Hegel questions this idea of the individual as originally in possession of
itself, by letting its Eigentümlichkeit, its singularity, only appear through its
actions, through what it creates and attains. The individual is, Hegel claims,
what it has become through its own activity.15 To have Eigentum,
“property,” is for Hegel to appear as will and to manifest oneself as one’s
own. That is why Hegel makes a distinction between “possession” [Besitz]
and “property” [Eigentum], the former being incorporated and consumed
whereas the latter is maintained and given a social form, which others can
recognize.16 One sees oneself as an independent person in and through one’s
property, Hegel says, as one makes oneself into reality by making the outer
world into one’s own, through appropriation of it and externalization of
oneself in it. To have property is thus to manifest oneself as will and to be
one’s own.17
The self-externalizing act [Selbstentäusserung] of making the world into
one’s own and appearing as someone in the world is also, however, a
process of alienation [Entfremdung], of being at odds with oneself and the
world.18 What Hegel tells us is that making the world into our own—which
is the same as making our selves into our own in the world—is a double-

14
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and
Apparatus Criticus by Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), §27,
305: “every Man has a Property in his own Person”; §44, 316: “Man (by being Master of
himself, and Proprietor of his own Person, and the Actions or Labour of it) had still in
himself the great Foundation of Property.”
15
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 294–297; Phenomenology of Spirit, 237–240.
16
G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staats-
wissenschaft im Grundrisse, Werke, vol. 7, §45, 107; §51 and Zusatz, 115; Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), §45, 42,
§51, 45 and additions to §51, 237.
17
To be an abstract person (with rights) is for Hegel therefore connected to the right to
have property. See Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, §§39–40, and 57, 98–
102, 122–123; Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, §§39–40, and 57, 38–40, 47–48. See also Hegel,
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830), eds. Friedhelm
Nicolin & Otto Pöggeler (Hamburg: Meiner, 1991), §§488–492, 392–393; Hegel’s
Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
(1830), trans. William Wallace and A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971),
§§488–492, 244–245.
18
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 366: “[D]as Dasein ist vielmehr die Verkehrung
jeder Bestimmtheit in ihre entgegengesetzte, und nur diese Entfremdung ist das Wesen
und Erhaltung des Ganzen”; Phenomenology of Spirit, 299–300: “[E]xistence is really the
perversion of every determinateness into its opposite, and it is only this alienation that is
the essential nature and support of the whole.”

137
 VICTORIA FARELD

edged activity. It is not only an act of appropriation, of gaining something,

but just as much an act of ex-propriation, of losing something that belongs
to the proper, to proprius, to one’s own.19
The two moments of alienation emphasized by Hegel, Entäusserung and
Entfremdung (in Miller’s translation: “externalization” and “alienation”) can
help us to further complicate the connections between self and ownership.
Like Entäusserung or dispossession, expropriation means to be forced to
release one’s property, what belongs to oneself, to another. However, the
dialectical movement of self-expropriation involves, I claim—just like
Aristophanes’ story—a double movement. What you lose, or what is taken
away from you, you have never owned. The unity is always already lost, ex-
proprius occurs at once with proprius.20 You appear as a self only by
simultaneously being dispossessed of yourself.
In line with this view, the desire for recognition could be understood as a
force toward self-expropriation. This means that the dialectical relation
between me and the other, which makes me exposed, is not to be under-
stood as a movement where something inner is externalized and shattered in
my encounter with the other, but rather as manifesting that this unity which
is “me” is always already lost to me, as a precondition for my self-relation.
To put self-expropriation at the center of self-constitution is an effort to
challenge the historical connections between Eigentum and Eigentümlich-
keit, between “property” and “individuality,” and to question the influential
idea that access to oneself (to what is proper, so to speak) occurs via the
possession of oneself. Being one with oneself (bei sich sein) presupposes,
therefore, a certain loss of self.
This perspective focuses not only on how one appears as a self through
one’s relations to others (which in my view has been too much at the center
of attention in contemporary discussions of recognition), but also, and

19
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 363–365; Phenomenology of Spirit, 297–299. See also
360: “das unmittelbar, d.h. ohne Entfremdung an und für sich geltende Selbst ist ohne
Substanz […]; seine Substanz ist also seine Entäusserung selbst, und die Entäusserung ist
die Substanz“; 295: “this activity and process whereby the substance becomes actual is the
alienation of the personality, for the self that has an absolute significance in its immediate
existence, i.e. without having alienated itself from itself, is without substance […]; Its
substance, therefore, is its externalization, and the externalization is the substance.”
20
Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, preface to The Inoperative Community, ed. Peter Connor, trans.
Peter Connor et al. (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), xxxvii:
“‘to be exposed’ means to be ‘posed’ in exteriority […] having access to what is proper to
existence, and therefore, of course, to the proper of one’s own existence, only through an
‘expropriation.’”

138
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

primarily, on how these relations dispossess the self, expose the self.
Moreover, this perspective makes it possible to shift focus from the dyadic
relation between self and other, to the social space that enables and
regulates this relation.

Non-recognizability and dialectical redundancy

Let us now turn to Hegel’s idea of ethical life, Sittlichkeit, understood as a

theory of how the individual emerges as an individual in the state. As such,
Hegel’s discussion of ethical life is an account of the social norms governing
subject-constitution. This implies a shift of focus to the more interesting
question, in my view, which is not about recognition but rather about
recognizability. It concerns what conditions the self’s encounter with the
other, how we appear as recognizable to each other, how this space of
appearance is structured.21 In this part, I would like to explore how Hegel’s
idea of Sittlichkeit could be used analytically in relation to questions of
recognizability.
With the notion of Sittlichkeit, Hegel insists that one can only become an
individual by inhabiting and embodying a particular form of social life. The
freedom one gains as an individual is a result of one’s taking part in a social
life, in an ethical community, and of having subjected oneself to the norms
and customs governing this life. This is, of course, an inversion of the
leading contract theories of Hegel’s day, which he criticizes. For Hegel,
freedom is always the result of a certain form of subjection, and the
individual is the result of a certain form of social life. This means that for
the individual to emerge—that is, to be recognized as an individual—it has
to be part of this social space of mediation, where one’s particularity as an
individual is recognizable in the name of the common. The particular
individual is, according to Hegel, the result of a mediation, which trans-
forms the individual from something in a state of abstract and unrecog-
nizable particularity without any social content, into something that is

21
Cf. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso, 2009), 4–
15. Butler here distinguishes recognizability from recognition: “If recognition is an act or
practice undertaken by at least two subjects, and which, as the Hegelian frame would
suggest, constitutes a reciprocal action, then recognizability describes those general
conditions on the basis of which recognition can and does take place,” ibid., 6. See also
Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press,
2005), 27–29.

139
 VICTORIA FARELD

particular in a way that is recognizable. This can only occur, he claims, for
citizens in a state, in which one’s particularity appears by being given a
concrete form that is recognizable to others.22 Or as Etienne Balibar has put
it, a bit more radically: individuality, for Hegel, is a social institution.23
If we push Hegel’s idea of subject-constitution within the state a bit
further—if we radicalize it in line with what Balibar suggests—it makes
possible a discussion of the normative and normalizing aspects of the
subject’s appearance as a recognizable subject in the state. How we are, as
subjects, always already included in a certain space, and subjected to the
norms and practices governing this space. How we are called into being in
this space by being conferred a name, by being made addressable and
thereby recognizable to each other.
I argue that to become recognizable at all, one has to be involved in
dialectical relations of mediation. Again, if we understand this situation in
terms of exposure, it becomes clear that we are exposed in relations of
mediation, as our self-relations are mediated from places outside of us.
There is also, however, a mode of exposure which appears as a result of
being posed outside of this space of mediation itself, of being made, what I
call, dialectically redundant.
In Latin, there is a well-known distinction between two words that are
both used to describe the other, namely “alter” and “alius.” This distinction
could be useful to explain what it might mean to be made dialectically
redundant. The word “alter” refers to a particular somebody, a specific
other to whom one has established a certain relationship (it could be one of
violence or struggle, it could be one’s enemy, as long as there is a
relationship, by which the other is defined). “Alius,” on the contrary, is an
unspecific, undefined stranger; too different or too distant, to establish a
relationship to. “Alius” is not even recognizable as someone specific.24
Hegel himself mentions this distinction between “alter” and “alius” in
the Science of Logic, to stress the difference between otherness related to
reciprocity and unspecific otherness.25 And even if “alius” for Hegel can be

22
Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, §§141–157 and 260, 286–304, 406–407;
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, §§141–157 and 260, 103–110, 160–161.
23
Etienne Balibar, “Ambiguous Universality,” Differences, vol. 7, No. 1, 1995, 58–63.
24
Florence Dupont, “Rome ou l’altérité incluse,” L’étranger dans la mondialité, Revue rue
Descartes, No. 37, 2002, 42–46. See also Giorgio Agamben’s use of this distinction in his
“Friendship,” Contretemps, No. 5, 2004, 6.
25
G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik: Erster Teil (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990),
112; Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 1998) 117.

140
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

embraced by dialectic, it is obvious that a dialectical way of understanding

the dynamics of relations presupposes the structural reciprocity, which
characterizes an “alter” relationship: the other has to be someone specific.
In this sense, a dialectical relation is indeed inclusive—in line with the
critique of dialectics for not letting anything exist outside of it—as it cannot
account for a situation of radical exclusion, where one is made invisible,
treated with indifference, or appears as non-recognizable.
With this in mind, using a certain way of dialectical thinking to reflect
upon what governs recognizability could be criticized as a futile endeavor,
as the important question of non-recognizability—what makes some people
unrecognizable to us—seems to have no place within a dialectical frame of
thought. Precisely at this point, however, where the Hegelian dialectic seems
to have encountered its limits we find its pertinence for our discussion, by
focusing on what the dialectic itself produces as exclusions and redundancies.
No matter how inclusive dialectic seems to be, as many critics have
pointed out, there has always been an outside to it, which is intimately
connected to its inside: a dialectical rubbish heap, remainders, surplus,
supplements or whatever we might call that which exceeds—and secures—
the dialectical setting.26 Hegel himself made the Africans dialectically
redundant in his world history.27 Frantz Fanon made us aware of how the
colonial situation put the structural reciprocity of the Hegelian dialectic out
of play.28 A similar way of putting it would be: The colonizer regarded the
colonized as “alius,” there was no dialectical, no alter, relationship. In
contrast to Hegel’s slave, the colonized was dialectically abandoned.
To be treated as “alius” is indeed to be exposed, to be posed outside the
space of addressability, because what actually ends up outside the dialectical
relation appears as non-recognizable. What you say is not intelligible, or
maybe not even heard, your face cannot be recognized as a human face, or
as the face of a unique individual. This exposure appears to us, I claim, in
the form of non-recognizability.

26
Cf. Jacques Derrida’s treatment of Antigone in the Phenomenology as an element
which “assures the system’s space of possibility” by exceeding it; see Derrida, Glas, trans.
John P. Leavy, & Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 [1974]), 162a.
27
For a discussion of Hegel’s treatment of Africa, see Achille Mbembe, “Out of the
World,” trans. Steven Rendell, in Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2001) 176ff. See also Ronald Kuykendall, “Hegel and Africa,” Journal of
Black Studies, vol. 23, No. 4, 1993, 571–581.
28
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York:
Grove Press, 1967 [1952]).

141
 VICTORIA FARELD

Let us return to Hegel to try to specify what dialectical redundancy, or

dialectical abandon, might mean here. In contrast to what Hegel calls
“abstract universality,” which tries to claim its universality by negating
particularity and by positing itself as the opposite of the particular, Hegel
outlines what he calls “concrete (that is, ‘true’) universality” (konkrete
Allgemeinheit).29 The concrete universal cannot be abstract commonality,
but is, one might say, always the result of a construction, of a mediation that
has its constitutive condition in particularity, and can only appear in
relationship to it. True universality, according to Hegel, is thus not an
abstract point of departure—we are all human beings—but has its very
origin in particularity.
Now, what does this mean in relation to recognizability? Since the
universal is never there from the start, we have to give it some concrete
form, and claim universality, through particularity. What happens when
you are made dialectically redundant is that your particularity cannot be
intelligible as part of a commonality. The universal claim—I am a human
being, I have a right to have human rights, to use Hannah Arendt’s
expression30—turns out to be an abstraction that doesn’t have any concrete
social and political significance. It lacks concrete form, as it has not been
dialectically mediated. You end up referring to a universality, which claims
its universality by reducing particularity to mere abstraction, and which
makes individuals appear as abstract, separate, identical—and non-
recognizable—units, as they don’t have any social, mediated, content.
And, not surprisingly, it turns out that those who are in a situation in
which they have nothing else to refer to than an abstract humanity, who
cannot claim any particularity (for instance if they don’t have any
documents to prove their particular identities), they tend to be not
recognized as human individuals when it comes to human rights.31

29
Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, §303, 474; Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,
§303, 198. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften, §552, 431; Hegel’s
Philosophy of Mind, §552, 282. See also Phänomenologie des Geistes, 436–438; Phenom-
enology of Spirit, 359–361.
30
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken Books, 2004
[1951]), 375.
31
See Maria Johansen, “Some Versions of a Paradox: A Non-Sovereign Approach to the
Rights of Man,” Documenta Magazine, No. 1–3, 2007,
http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/article.php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=794;
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-
Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Jacques Rancière, “Who is the
Subject of the Rights of Man?,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 103, No. 2–3, 2004.

142
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

It turns out that one has to be someone specific, a unique individual—

and the important thing here is that one has to be recognized as such (again: by
proving one’s particularity)—in order to be recognizable as human in general.
So, interestingly enough, being human in general, is in a way being too
particular; being particular in an unmediated and thus non-recognizable sense.
But moreover: if you cannot refer to anything common that makes you
specific, or anything universal that makes you particular (a citizenship, a
profession, an ethnic identity, etc.); if you are just you, you are deprived of a
dialectical relation, you are dialectically abandoned, because your particu-
larity will not be intelligible, your universality will lack any concretion—and
you will appear as non-recognizable. To be made dialectically redundant in
this way is indeed to be in a no man’s land: you cannot claim particularity
and you cannot claim universality.
It is well known that many people today in liberal, Western democracies
live in such a no man’s land. The so-called irregular migrants, les sans-
papiers, tend to be deprived of the “right to have human rights.” They are as
Giorgio Agamben says included in society by being excluded from it, as
they are defined by a system (as “illegal” or “criminal”) of which they
cannot be part and within which they cannot act (being deprived even of
the legal status of the criminal).32 When Arendt discusses the paradox at the
core of human rights in The Origins of Totalitarianism, she captures very
succinctly, in my view, this movement of being made dialectical redundant
and, as a result, non-recognizable:

The paradox involved in the loss of human rights is that such loss
coincides with the instant when a person becomes a human being in
general—without a profession, without a citizenship, without an
opinion, without a deed by which to identify and specify himself—and
different in general, representing nothing but his own absolutely unique
individuality which, deprived of expression within and action upon a
common world, loses all significance.33

She also says interestingly that the misery for the refugees “is not that they
are not equal before the law, but that no law exists for them; not that they
are oppressed but that nobody wants even to oppress them.”34 Being deprived

32
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 17–29.
33
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 383.
34
Ibid., 375, my italics. Saying that nobody has an interest in oppressing them is, of
course, not the same as saying that they are not victims of oppression and brute

143
 VICTORIA FARELD

of all legal status they have no place in the world where they can act; They
are abandoned, as they have been deprived of the structural reciprocity
which characterizes a dialectical space of mediation and thus cannot act
within the very relations by which they are defined, existing in “the abstract
nakedness of being human and nothing but human.”35 They live among us
as if they were not here, unrecognizable to us, as the political system’s own
produced remainders—as what both exceeds and secures the abstract idea
of universal rights.

Being exposed

Using Hegel and a way of thinking dialectically when discussing questions

of recognizability makes visible that these issues are intimately connected
with dependency and exposure. Being made dialectically redundant is one
mode, I claim, in which exposure appears to us. Understanding exposure as
constitutive of subjectivity does not imply, however, making it into a
common, unchanging feature for all human beings, as part of the essence of
being human. What I am interested in is to try to analyze how exposure
appears to us in various forms, how it manifests itself in different social
practices, rather than giving it some general and independent status.
Although our involvement in relations of dependence makes us exposed
in our self-constitution it is not the relations as such which manifest
exposure, but rather different splits and ruptures in these relations. This
point has been emphasized by Judith Butler in her most recent works. She
argues that loss and mourning could be seen as specific modes by which
vulnerability and exposure appear to us.36
I would like to suggest that another form by which exposure manifests
itself to us is a situation of dialectical redundancy. In this situation,
exposure turns out to be an indeterminacy in what is human, rather than

exploitation, which is indeed the case for many irregular migrants today. The point is
that they are made invisible and inaudible, in a sense superfluous within the political
system, by being excluded from, but yet defined by, the political realm.
35
Ibid., 377. See also ibid., 381 where she writes: “It seems that a man who is nothing but
a man has lost the very qualities which make it possible for other people to treat him as a
fellow-man.”
36
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, London: Verso
2004); Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself; Butler, Frames of War. See also Catherine
Mills, “Normative Violence, Vulnerability, and Responsibility,” Differences, vol. 18, No.
2, 2007, 133–156.

144
 HEGEL AND EXPOSURE

something common to all humans as a given. It shows us that what is

recognizable as human depends upon the norms governing the space of
mediation, in which we emerge as subjects. Exposure, in this sense, thus
reveals that what it is to be human is never given, it has to be recognized.
Nothing about us is recognizable to us in general, without mediations
through socially regulated practices. So, what ultimately counts as human is
conditioned by the socio-political processes determining recognizability.37
Instead of saying something general about all humans being exposed, as an
abstract point of departure for a political philosophy, a more interesting and
important question would thus be to ask how exposure appears to us in its
particularities, and to investigate its different forms and manifestations
within a certain socio-political setting.
And Hegel can help us here. He can help us to think about ourselves as
necessarily caught up in relations of absolute dependence. We can use
Hegel, I suggest, in discussing the consequences of this condition of
dependence. Not as an abstract and general idea—‘I am necessarily in the
hands of others when I try to define myself’, or, ‘we are as human beings
dependent on each other’. Rather: what does it mean, not as an abstract
knowledge, but spiritually—geistlich—in a Hegelian sense, as part of our
reflective self-understanding? What does it mean in our experiencing the
world if we really make it into knowledge of ourselves and of our being in
the world? How do we live this knowledge?
If we think of ourselves as exposed, in different ways, we should not
continue to outline ideas of political and ethical agency based on notions of
the subject as autonomous or self-transparent. Hegel insisted that the world
as we experience it changes as a result of our own activity. But more import-
antly, he emphasized that we, as experiencing subjects, are constantly trans-
formed by the experiences we undergo—experiences that make us other to
ourselves. Instead of trying to overcome this condition of exteriority or
exposure, we should try to reconsider what agency, autonomy, and respon-
sibility might mean to us, starting in our lived experience of being exposed.

37
Cf. Mills, 146–149; Butler, Precarious Life, 146–147.

145
 The Place of Art in Hegel’s Phenomenology
SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

Art, mythology, and religion in Hegel’s early writings

Hegel’s critique of the Romantic aspiration to place art above philosophy is

well known, as is the element of self-criticism that this entails.1 In the Jena
period, from his first real public appearance in 1801 with The Difference
Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy onwards, Hegel
undertakes a critical re-evaluation of his earlier views, which had been
developed in the writings from Bern and Frankfurt. In these earlier texts,
the capacity to found an ethical order, a Sittlichkeit, was ascribed first and
foremost to religion, but also to an art understood in the general and broad
sense in which the state itself can be taken to be a work of art, as in the case
of the Greek polis. But at the present moment, Hegel says in 1801, there is a
“need for philosophy,” i.e., an overcoming of the divisions of modernity
that would take place through the work of reason and of the concept, and
not through an aesthetic intuition.
Hegel’s analysis of the ethical order began with a study of early
Christianity, though the aim of the analysis was to intervene in the present,
by investigating the possibility of a religion that would combine the virtues
of Kant and the French Revolution, and would be able to regenerate a
unified world. But as Hegel’s analysis progressed, Christianity and in
particular the church appeared as a world separated from everyday life, and
the city of God as an ideal city, i.e., a mere representation and a negative
counter-image that was unable to produce a true reconciliation. This is why,
after acknowledging the necessary failure of Christianity to achieve the goal
of freedom and reason, Hegel turned to the Greeks, and to a kind of

1
The standard work is still Otto Pöggeler, Hegels Kritik der Romantik (Munich: Fink,
1988).

147
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

aestheticized view of the polis, which now appeared as the place where
reason and freedom were truly realized.2 The beautiful religion of the
Greeks could in this sense be taken as an ideal in the full sense, and Hegel
explicitly defined the Greek polis as a work of art.3 The city-state was
instituted by the work of art, but it was also itself a work, a harmonious unity
where the political and the aesthetic ceaselessly passed over into each other.
A decisive influence for Hegel’s turn to the Greeks seems to have come
from Hölderlin. Together they developed these ideas in terms of what they
called “popular education” (Volkserziehung), to the point that they even
planned a division of labor between them, so that Hölderlin would deal with
art and Hegel with religion.4 Hegel now systematically opposed the Greek
beautiful religion to the “positivity” of the Christian religion, where this
education had been transformed into a transcendent law and a merely
external cult, and Hölderlin’s Hyperion and the successive versions of the
tragedy Empedocles could be taken as attempts to work this out in the
literary form of a “modern tragedy.” The background for this was
undoubtedly Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education, but in asking the
question of how the idea of reason could be made effective in a contem-
porary world that is characterized by division and sundering, they wanted
to go beyond the merely “beautiful appearance” that Schiller proposed as
the domain of art.
The most densely formulated version of this vision is the so-called
“System Program of German Idealism,” a text dating from 1796, though
excavated from the obscurity of a Berlin library and published only as late as
1917, by Franz Rosenzweig. The text has itself been handed down to us in a
fragmented state, and its author remains unknown. Hegel, Schelling, and
Hölderlin have all been suggested as likely candidates, and contemporary

2
For a discussion of the context of Hegel’s early theological fragments and the
development of Sittlichkeit, and of how a reinterpreted Christianity became one of a
series of different utopian modes projected back in history, see Christoph Jamme, “Ein
ungelehrtes Buch.” Die philosophische Gemeinschaft zwischen Hölderlin und Hegel in
Frankfurt 1797–1800, Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 23. On the ideas of Greece, see Jacques
Taminiaux, La nostalgie de la Grèce à l’aube de l’idéalisme allemand (The Hague: Nijhoff,
1967).
3
See, for instance, the passages in Jenaer Systementwürfe, Gesammelte Werke vol. 8
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1976), 263.
4
See Briefe von und an Hegel, eds. Johannes Hoffmeister & Friedhelm Nicolin (Ham-
burg: Felix Meiner, 1981), vol. I, 24f. Hegel’s response to Hölderlin’s proposal is lost.

148
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

consensus opts for Hegel.5 This fragment brings together philosophy,

religion, morality, and politics under the rubric of a new “mythology,” in
which abstract ideas were to be cast in sensible form, and the merely
externally associated limbs of the social body joined together as in a living
organism. The ideas of practical reason (i.e., the heritage of Kant’s second
Critique), the anonymous author suggests, need to be brought into contact
with a speculative or “grand physics,” so that they cease to be merely
unattainable ideals, just as the state, previously considered as an external
“machine,”6 needs to be transcended in the direction of a higher idea where
all men can be united and perceive their own individuality as stemming
from a higher principle of reason, which is to be found in the idea of beauty:

Finally, the idea that unites all [previous ones], the idea of beauty, the
word understood in the higher Platonic sense. I am convinced now, that
the highest act of reason, which—in that it comprises all ideas—is an
aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are united as sisters only in
beauty. The philosopher must possess as much aesthetic capacity as the
poet. The people without an aesthetic sensibility are philosophical
literalists [Buchstabenphilosophen]. Philosophy of the spirit is an aesthetic
philosophy.7

5
Cf. Christoph Jamme and Helmuth Schneider (eds.), Mythologie der Vernunft
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), which contains a selection of important
philological and philosophical interpretations of the text, by Rosenzweig, Otto Pöggeler,
Dieter Henrich, Anne Marie Gethmann-Siefert, and Xavier Tilliette.
6
The image of the state-machine in fact has Kantian roots; cf. for instance the paragraph
“Beauty as a Symbol of Morality” in the Critique of Judgment (§59), where Kant
discusses two different ways of symbolizing the state: if it is controlled by “internal
popular law” it is represented by an “animated body,” if is controlled by a “singular
absolute will,” by a “mere machine.” Both of these cases are however “symbolic
representations,” and this symbolism, in merely transferring a “rule for reflection” from
one object to another, would be precisely what a text like the Älteste Systemprogramm
attempts to transgress by posing the aesthetic idea as the highest.
7
“Zuletzt die Idee, die alle vereinigt, die Idee der Schönheit, das Wort im höheren
platonischem Sinne genommen. Ich bin nur überzeugt, daß der höchste Akt der
Vernunft, der, indem sie alle Ideen umfasst, ein ästhe[ti]stischer Akt ist, und das
Wahrheit und Güte, nur in der Schönheit verschwistert sind—Der Philosoph muß
ebenso viel ästhetischer Kraft besitzen / als der Dichter, die Menschen ohne ästhetischen
Sinn sind unsre Buchstabenphilosophen. Die Philosophie des Geistes ist eine ästhetische
Philo[sophie].” Das älteste Systemprogramm, quoted from the transcription in
Mythologie der Vernunft, 12f. The slash indicates the break between recto and verso page
of the manuscript.

149
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

The double movement of the aestheticizing of the political and the

politicizing of aesthetics that was to become one of the most fateful legacies
of Romanticism here finds one of its essential roots. It is only as united
under the spell of the aesthetic idea, the idea tou kalou derived from Plato’s
Phaedrus and Symposium, that morality, philosophy, and public life can
come together, which also signifies that the role of the philosopher will have
to be transformed: he must not only be endowed with an aesthetic
sensibility equal to the poet, but should in fact in himself include and
transcend both the figure of the philosopher and the poet, just as the
imagination in its upward flight passes beyond the strictures of both the
understanding and sensibility, and leads us towards a new conception of
reason. Aesthetic ideas are thus not only meant as fiction—which, as we
saw, was the aporia encountered by Schiller in his Letters on Aesthetic
Education—but as effective interventions in reality.
The question becomes to what extent this can take place in the modern
world. For Schiller, the remoteness of the ideal is precisely what teaches us
not to confound it with reality, and prevents it from becoming a deception,
whereas for Hölderlin and Hegel this distance, which subsequently would
be worked out as an idea of “aesthetic autonomy,” condemns the work to an
exile in the space of the imaginary. This problem will echo throughout the
history of modern art and its attempts to become politically effective and to
transcend its dimension of autonomy or the “aura,” as in the famous
exchange between Benjamin and Adorno in the second half of the 1930s, or
later in Marcuse’s idea of “repressive desublimation,” and it extends into the
last decade’s debates between modernism and postmodernism.
But Hegel soon withdrew from the heights of the aesthetic idea. Unlike
Schelling, who opted for the possibility of reunifying the world through a
work of art, which he famously saw in the modern epic created in Dante’s
Divine Comedy,8 Hegel came to fundamentally distrust the Romantic vision,
and from the Differenzschrift onwards, it is philosophy and conceptual
thought which for him holds the key to the reconciliation of the modern
world. The short essay from 1800, the year before the Differenzschrift, on
Schiller’s drama Wallenstein points to the fact that there can be no such
thing as a modern epic: modernity is inherently prosaic, it does not allow
for a return to religious or aesthetic ideals, and the heroism of Schiller’s

8
See his “Über Dante in philosophischer Beziehung” (1803), first published in the two-
year collaborative project undertaken with Hegel in Jena, Kritisches Journal der Philosophie.

150
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

protagonist leads him to be destroyed by the disenchantment of the modern

world, and ground down by the “prose of relations” (Prosa der
Verhältnisse), of which Hegel would later speak in his analysis of the
modern novel in the Berlin lectures on aesthetics.9 This does not of course
mean that art would simply have become useless, only that its role can no
longer be to give a unified representation of the world; it can hold up a
mirror to us that shows a broken reflection, but the true unity of self and
image can only come through a second-order reflection on this reflection,
i.e., by speculation, which is the true task of philosophy.
This would mean that Hermann Glockner’s thesis that there is
something like an “aesthetic foundation”10 for Hegel’s system, as this
develops from the early Jena writings and onwards, cannot be sustained.
Glockner’s thesis can be used in a weaker form to imply that the system
itself has an aesthetic quality, or that it is based upon aesthetics as its first
(chronological or logical) part. But it can also be read as a more open
suggestion, which is what I would like to do here, i.e., as a question that
bears upon Hegel’s actual use of artworks, how they are intertwined with
the logical structure of his thought, to what extent they are essential to its
very articulation, and in this sense would be located neither beneath nor
above philosophy, but as it were within it. And it is this question that I
would like to pursue in relation to the Phenomenology, the work that
concludes Hegel’s Jena period, and where he is supposed to have finally
overcome the romantic temptation.

The multiple uses of art in the Phenomenology

In the Phenomenology, Hegel draws on several of his earlier analyses, and

inscribes them in an overarching structure, which is the path of spirit
coming to itself, or is the “experience of consciousness” as it gradually
comes to overcome its distance towards the world, and to understand that
substance must be understood as subject, and the subject as substance. The
world, as substance, must be grasped as a meaningful totality, for which the

9
The conflict of the modern novel in fact lies “zwischen der Poesie des Herzens und der
entgegenstehenden Prosa der Verhältnisse”; see Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, Werke,
eds. Eva Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) vol.
14, 219f, and vol. 15, 392f.
10
“Die Ästhetik in Hegels System der Philosophie” (1931), rpr. in Beiträge zum
Verständnis und zur Kritik Hegels, Hegel-Studien, 1965, Beiheft 2, 425–442.

151
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

mediated unity of self-consciousness is the model, but subjective

consciousness must in turn understand that it itself is part of a larger
substantial order of an intersubjective nature. Whether these two orders can
be truly united is the key issue for Hegel; the kind of unification that the
Romantics sought in art and aesthetic intuition can however no longer be
the final answer, but at best only a preliminary form, destined to be
superseded by higher and more complex forms of mediation, with the unity
achieved in the philosophical concept as the ultimate goal.
The question would be: what happens to the earlier understanding of art
in the phenomenological model? Is it simply rejected and relegated to a
prehistory supposed to have been overcome in the System of Science? In
point of fact, references to art and literature permeate the whole of Hegel’s
text. They are however always anonymous, as if constituting a kind of tacit
knowledge woven into the fabric of the experience of consciousness, and are
indeed always more or less inexact; Hegel paraphrases and translates from
memory, he cuts and edits at will, but always with the intent of integrating
the references into the movement of his own discourse.
Beginning with the second section of the chapter on reason, the literary
references multiply: the paraphrased quote from Goethe’s first version of
Faust that opens the analysis of “Pleasure and Necessity,” where Hegel
points to the contradiction in Faust’s desire to achieve instant gratification
in fusing with the other, while still retaining the autonomy of self-
consciousness; the following step, which analyzes “the law of the heart,”
weaves together references to Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Héloïse, Schiller’s
play The Robbers, Jacobi’s Woldemar, and perhaps also Hölderlin’s Hyperion.
Later we encounter the unfortunate Don Quixote, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister,
and also many other scattered references.
In the following chapter, on spirit, it would be possible to unearth a
logical development organized around three successive readings of literary
examples. The first section, “True spirit, ethical life,” famously draws on
Greek tragedy, and particularly Sophocles’s Antigone, which Hegel quotes
in a typically free manner, in order to establish the irreducible conflict of
the power of the family and the netherworld, incarnated in the figure of
Antigone, and the power of the state and the polis, incarnated in the figure
of Creon. The second section, “Spirit alienated from itself: Cultural
maturation” (Bildung), cites Diderot’s dialogue Rameau’s Nephew in order
to show the vertiginous re-evaluation of all values brought about by the
completion of cultural maturation on the eve of the revolution. And the

152
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

third and final section, “Spirit certain of itself: morality,” in its analysis of
the “beautiful soul,” looks to novels, what seems to be Goethe’s Wilhelm
Meisters Lehrjahre and once more Jacobi’s Woldemar, and quotes directly
from Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen. And then, of course, at the very
end of the chapter on absolute knowledge, we find the slightly altered quote
from Schiller’s Die Freundschaft, which points to the necessity for spirit to
go out of itself into the contingency of history in order to come back to itself
as grasped history. These two forms, Hegel writes, introducing the final
quote by a dramatic dash, together constitute “the Golgotha of absolute
spirit, the actuality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it
would be lifeless and alone; only—Out of the chalice of this realm of spirits /
Foams forth to him his infinity” (§810).11
I will not continue with more examples, since my proposal here is not to
add to the collection of poetic and/or literary images and borrowings
scattered throughout the text of the Phenomenology, but rather to say
something about the logic of the collection. This logic is, I will argue, in fact
double—art appears to play two roles.
On the one hand, it is an object of analysis, and its role is circumscribed
within a historical narrative that treats it in terms of its capacity to provide
us with an adequate presentation of the movement of the concept. In the
Phenomenology, art thus gradually emerges from out of its intertwinement
with religion until it reaches the state of “absolute art”—and this is where it
seems to end, in Greek comedy and a momentary state of happiness, both
unprecedented and without sequel, where man feels completely at home in
the world, but at the price of almost entirely evacuating his own substance.
In this, the Phenomenology can be taken to affirm that philosophy must
overcome art, and to prefigure the later statements in the Berlin lectures on
art as a “thing of the past,” something that must be superseded by philosophy
as an adequate way of grasping the concept in the medium of thought itself.
On the other hand, artworks often seem to function as something that
we, following Jean Starobinski in his discussion of Freud,12 could call

11
All citations from the Phenomenology are taken from the translation by Terry
Pinkard, with paragraph numbers. The translation is available at:
http://web.mac.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html.
12
See Jean Starobinski, “Hamlet et Freud,” preface in Ernest Jones, Hamlet et Oedipe
(Paris: Gallimard, 1967). For a discussion that takes its cues from Starobinski, but then
proceeds to show how the work, when positioned as a model or tool, also acquires the
capacity to talk back, and to challenge the hegemony of theoretical representation as

153
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

“operators.” By using this term Starobinski suggests that Hamlet and

Oedipus are not just objects for Freud’s discourse, but more like sieves or
epistemological grids that constitute integral parts of the project of
psychoanalysis—they are a privileged representation of the subject’s desire
in its relation to castration. Similarly, in Hegel, artworks often appear to
operate as models for thought at strategically located junctures in the text.
The idea of the “operator” indicates that they are located halfway between
concepts, which as such would be indispensable, and illustrations, which
would be merely sensuous and particular representations of properly
conceptual structures. They belong to the sphere of the imagination, of the
Mitte, which since Kant had always been given the role of unifying the
architectural whole, although neither as a foundation nor as telos, but as a
properly interstitial element.
This use of art as a philosophical tool, while not simply contradicting the
later thesis on art as a thing of the past with respect to its “highest aim,” in
fact draws Hegel close to some of Schelling’s ideas about art as an
“organon,” and it opens up the possibility of a different type of exchange
between art and philosophy that constitutes one of the most vital aspects of
the Hegelian heritage in contemporary philosophy of art. This however
requires that we examine more closely the distinction between art as an
object of philosophy, which can be treated systematically, and an art that
somehow insinuates itself into philosophy and informs its discourse in a
more oblique way.

The systematic treatment

Let me begin by giving a brief overview of the systematic treatment, which

we find in the section entitled “The Religion of Art” (Die Kunstreligion),
which is located in the middle of the chapter on religion. As the title
indicates, the treatment of art is systematically interwoven with and even
subordinate to the treatment of religion, which takes us from its first and
simplest forms, where art has not yet appeared, through Greece, where it
does appear. and forms the strange compound “Kunstreligion” (which
Hegel sometimes even calls “artificial religion,” “künstliche Religion,” a

such, see Jean-François Lyotard, “Freud selon Cézanne,” in Des dispositifs pulsionnels
(Paris: UGE, 1973).

154
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

religion as it were based in artifacts), and up to Christianity, where art

recedes into the sphere of memory and Er-Innerung.
Hegel first takes us through an analysis of “natural religion,” which starts
in the “luminous essence” (das Lichtwesen), a pure beginning or a gift of
being which is also, as Derrida has pointed out,13 a sacrifice, an expenditure
of luminosity, or the “creative secret” (§685) of birth. This secret must
however appear and enter into representation, and the thought that errs
through nature and generates a “sublime” lack of measure in its random
forms, must acquire a defined shape. No artworks are yet mentioned here,
but in the later Berlin lectures on aesthetics Hegel will connect this
sublimity to, for instance, Hebrew poetry, or to various early forms of
architecture. Now, this necessary shaping occurs in the subsequent and
slightly enigmatic section, “Plant and Animal,” in the form of pantheism
and a peaceful religion of flowers, which soon passes over into the violence
of the religion of animals. Out of this destructive violence, which “grinds
down,” as Hegel says, the beings that exist for themselves, the final moment
in natural religion emerges, which is also the first recognizable artistic
agent: the “Artisan” (der Werkmeister). His work is still instinctual, and it
produces the rectilinear and planar shapes of the understanding, in
pyramids and obelisks. The work that appears is however not yet spiritual,
but must receive this spiritual quality from the outside, as in the case of the
pyramids, which enclose a deceased placed within them, or as themselves a
dead body that must be given voice by the rising sun, as in Herodotus’s
description of the colossi of Memnon. In his work with external reality the
artisan however gradually comes to intertwine the geometric and the
organic, and “free architecture” (§694) begins here. In the later lectures,
Hegel would develop this much further, and explicate the link between
architecture as the first art of space, matter, and gravity, which inscribes
death and the underworld in a movement towards the Greek luminosity.14

13
See the discussion in Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974), 331ff.
14
Hegel’s rich treatment of the first phases of architecture has received surprisingly little
comment, although it in fact provides many keys as to why the schema of “architect-
tonics” imposes itself as a model for the philosophical system. In addition, this treatment
also displays a rich variety of synthesizing and interpretative moves that need to be made
for a history of art to have a beginning, in the passage from “pre-art” (Vorkunst) to art. I
discuss this in more detail in “Hegel and the Grounding of Architecture,” in Michael
Asgaard and Henrik Oxvig (eds.): The Paradoxes of Appearing: Essays on Art,
Architecture, and Philosophy (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2009).

155
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

In Greece and the religion of art, then, spirit truly becomes an artist, but
it does so on the basis of a fusion of art and religion. In the later Berlin
lectures, Hegel would more clearly separate art and religion, and also
present an infinitely more detailed analysis of the individual arts that
correlates them with historical phases. In this later version, the Greek
moment contains the sensible appearing of the idea, and freestanding
sculpture constitutes the paradigmatic form, whereas the subsequent
Christian moment ascribes this role to painting, although art as such, as the
presentation of truth, has been relegated to a secondary position in relation to
religion. In the Phenomenology, these different developmental lines are still
intertwined, and Greece is understood as the moment of an “absolute art,”
which will be just as condemned to disappearance as is the Greek Sittlichkeit.
In the Phenomenology, Hegel discerns three steps in the Greek develop-
ment, the abstract, the living, and the spiritual work of art, all of which can
be understood as the gradual emergence of self-consciousness and the
becoming-human of the divine powers. When this process is completed, art
will fade away, together with the Greek gods, and the systematic treatment
comes to an end.
The first moment takes us from sculpture to the hymn, and finally to the
cult, and “abstraction” here means that the constitutive moments of art
have still not formed an integral unity. In this process, gods and humans
begin to draw closer to each other, and the animal and natural shapes are
relegated to the obscure memory of the “unethical realm of the titans”
(§707). The proper appearance of the god however requires a higher
element than the merely external space of sculpture, and this will be
language, in the form of the hymn and the oracle, which are finally brought
together in the cult and the sacrifice, where the fruits that are consumed are
at once a spiritualization of matter and a descent of the gods. The cult joins
together the subjective interiority of worship and the external space of
sculpture, and makes art into a common and collective event.
In the second moment, the living work of art, we see a development
leading from the Mysteries to the Olympic games, and the emergence of a
human universality. This is the feast that man gives in the honor of himself,
where the human figure takes the place of archaic sculpture, and the
beautiful body of the athlete or the fighter receives the worship earlier
bestowed on the statue. Once more, however, the equilibrium between
inner and outer is lacking, and this time, too, language proves to be the

156
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

medium in which it is to be achieved, which will take us into the third and
final moment.
This is the spiritual work of art, where Hegel traces a development from
epic to tragedy and comedy, which gradually removes the gods from the
stage until man finally encounters nothing but himself, and this, as we will
see, is the brief and transitory moment of what Hegel calls “absolute art.” In
the epic, the spirit of different groups comes together in a kind of pre-state
community (for which the Iliad and the war against Troy seem to be the
paradigm), and here the interaction between man and gods already shows
the redundant nature of the divine powers in a way that prefigures the
comic dissolution: the actions of the gods merely duplicate those of the
humans, and as such they are nothing but a “farcical superfluity” (§730)
that initiates their process of dying. In tragedy language then appears in a
more pure form, where the protagonists take the stage in order to express
their inner essence, and where the hero with his determinate character
presents a further step of humanization. And finally, in comedy we witness
the “the depopulation of heaven” (§741): the gods are divested of their
substance and everything returns to consciousness and the self. This
moment “is, on the part of consciousness, both that of well-being and of
letting-oneself-be-well which is no longer to be found outside of this
comedy.” (§747) This, then, is absolute art, the moment of artistic con-
fidence, which is also the end of art as well as the first death of God in the
narrative of the Phenomenology. The moment of absolute art is a moment
of irony, a happiness that treats everything lightly, and plays upon the use of
masks and dissimulations in order to affirm its own lack of substance.15
The next section, “Revealed Religion,” looks back at this transformation
from the opposite end, or more precisely from a vantage point beyond the
end of classical art: as we noted, the elevation of the self in comedy is just as
much a loss of spirit, and Hegel now describes the pain inherent in the
“harsh phrase that God has died” (§752) as a transition. On the one hand,
the oracles are gone and the statues have become corpses, faith has
abandoned the hymns and the old artworks are “beautiful fruit broken off
from the tree” (§753)—all of which can be understood as a nostalgic trope

15
Which is of course a very tricky moment that may be read both with against dialectics;
cf. Werner Hamacher, “The End of Art with the Mask,” in Stuart Barnett (ed.): Hegel
After Derrida (London: Routledge, 1998).

157
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

derived from Winckelmann,16 but also as that which makes possible our
modern aesthetic appreciation of these works by wresting them away from
their original soil. This is developed further in the lectures on aesthetics,
and we can seen this idea germinating in the image of the young girl, who in
a gesture of mourning, but also of generosity and grace, offers the works to
us and our Er-innerung, to the interiorizing that takes place in our memory
and our art-historical institutions.17 On the other hand, the death of the old
gods is also the precondition for the birth of the new God, which is a
response to the pain of unhappy consciousness and the emptiness of a
situation where “the self is the absolute essence,” in the form of the descent
of the absolute to man—which in turn prefigures the second death of God,
this time a more profound death out of which philosophy itself will arise.

Art as operator

What then of the other role of art? As we have already noted, references to,
and hidden quotes from, works of art are scattered throughout the text of
the Phenomenology. A first remark would be the following: if in the
systematic explication presented above they appear as more and more
fulfilled and perfected indications of a development of consciousness, as
stepping-stones on the way toward the historical caesura which divides the
death of the ancient gods from the birth of the Christian God, they are also,
as singular works, powerful agents that assume a much more active and
organizing role than simply being illustrations of a development, which I
above attempted to capture by the term “operator.”
Let me clarify what I mean with two examples. Both are located at
similar critical junctures in the chapter on spirit—the first functions as the
paradigm for the dissolution of Greek ethical life, the second as the
endpoint of the process of cultural formation (Bildung), which opens onto a
kind of pre-revolutionary nihilism—and in this they constitute a kind of
interior rhyme in the text, a cumulative effect that allows the second reading
to inform the first, and which also organizes the narrative that they seem

16
In fact, Winckelmann can just as much as Hegel be read as a theorist of the rise of
aesthetics as a modern predicament: the loss of the Greek origin creates the space of art-
historical, aesthetic, and museological discourse.
17
Jean-Luc Nancy reads this passage as the advent of a discourse on art as autonomous
and self-conscious form, which requires the detachment from religion; see Les Muses
(Paris: Galilée, 1994), 75–97.

158
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

merely to illustrate. These two cases are, of course, Sophocles’s Antigone

and Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew.
If the Greek polis can be taken as a work of art, as an aesthetic-political
unity, which Hegel indeed had claimed in his earlier writings, then the
action performed by a work like Sophocles’s Antigone is the tearing apart of
this beautiful unity, the revealing of its irrevocable disunity. The properly
tragic dimension of tragedy is that both parties—in this case Creon and
Antigone—are in fact right, and both of them simply fulfill a duty, the law,
divine or human, that has been allotted to them, without being able to see
the justification for the actions on the part of the other: “Since it sees right
only on its own side and sees only wrong on the other, the consciousness
that belongs to divine law beholds on the other side merely human and
contingent acts of violence; and that consciousness which belongs to human
law beholds on the other side the obstinacy and disobedience of inward
being-for-itself” (§465). This is not just simply a conflict between the
subjectivity of the heart and the objectivity of duty, but between two equally
unavoidable duties (family-state, woman-man, divine-human), and both
Creon and Antigone emphasize the objective and non-personal dimension
of the law whose command they are carrying out. This incapacity to see the
perspective of the other is what brings down the beautiful totality of the
polis and of Greek ethical life, and when the spheres of family and state have
come to be opposed, the process of disintegration is irreversible: old and
young are pitted against each other, the state must attempt to undermine the
authority and inwardness of the family, while the family, and more precisely
femininity, the “polity’s eternal irony” (§474), overtakes the government’s
universal purpose and transforms it into a private family enterprise.
My interest here is not so much the significance of tragedy as a literary
artifact, or the tragic as an ontological and/or existential structure in Hegel’s
philosophy, but the way in which the example orients the logic of the
narrative. What Hegel intends to show is that the individual in the beautiful
ethical life is embedded in a social order that must be broken up for the
infinity of subjectivity to appear, and in the section entitled “The ethical
world, the human and divine law, man and woman,” which precedes the
references to Antigone, he provides us with an account of the equilibrium
between human and divine law, man and woman, state and family. This
account, I would like to propose, is obviously already structured by the
analysis of Sophocles, in its highlighting two features that will become the
key issue in the play: the family that provides the death of the individual

159
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

with a higher meaning through the ritual of burial and joins the earthly and
the chthonic order, and the inner structure of the family, where Hegel
stresses the relation between brother and sister as a pure recognition,
untainted by any desire. This latter relation, Hegel concludes, implies that
“the moment of the individual self, as recognizing and being recognized,
may here assert its right because it is bound up with the equilibrium of
blood relations and with relations utterly devoid of desire. The loss of a
brother is thus irreplaceable to the sister, and her duty towards him is the
highest” (§456). This indeed makes little sense as an analysis of Greek
ethical life in general, and the function of this passage seems rather to be its
prefiguring of the reading of Antigone; or, in the perspective that I would
like to suggest here, Sophocles’s play functions as an operator or a grid
through which Greek ethical life can appear in a particular way, and the
literary text intervenes not only as an illustration of a thesis established
independently of it. Greek ethical life was for Hegel always underway
towards the tragic dissolution staged in Sophocles’s play, or inversely:
Sophocles’s play is the hidden attractor that makes it possible to depict this
life as always underway towards tragedy.
My second example is the similar strategic use of Diderot’s Rameau’s
Nephew, which, I would argue, provides the argument in the subsequent
analysis of cultural maturation with its direction, and in this functions in a
similar fashion as Antigone. We must first note that Hegel does not
understand Bildung in the sense of a culture acquired through a reading of a
certain set of canonical texts, but as a progressive estrangement and
externalization of the self in which the individual must shed his natural
determination, all of which leads to a kind of nihilism, even though this is a
term that Hegel himself does not use (nor, it must be added, could it have
been available to him, since it emerges out of a certain nineteenth-century
reading of the Hegelian completion of metaphysics). This analysis forms a
part of the most entangled and layered sections of the Phenomenology, and
here I can only trace a particular line that ends in Diderot, although I
believe that it has bearings on the whole.
Hegel suggests a developing opposition between state power, substance,
or the collective order, and the individual’s quest for personal wealth. These
two are however only opposed on the surface, and, drawing on his reading
of British political economy, Hegel shows how the individual in his pursuit
of his own pleasure and gain in fact might contribute to the well-being of
the whole. On the basis of this dialectical opposition Hegel then proceeds to

160
 THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY

analyze the emergence of an increasingly complex social order, within

which the individual understands state power both as his own essence and
as that which deprives him of individuality, in a process that takes us from
the feudal order, through the arrival of the absolutist state and up to the
revolution. From my perspective, it is crucial that Hegel systematically
accounts for this development as a series of what could be called language
games—from the “language of the counsel” (§504), to the “heroism of
flattery” (§510), and the “empty name” (§511). These processes, where on
the one hand state power comes to be concentrated in a point that
eventually escapes definition since it is situated at the limit of language, and
on the other hand wealth develops into an independent system, no doubt
characterized by an opposite but equally empty verbosity, generate a torn,
split, and lacerated world, which is expressed in the “language of laceration”
(die Sprache der Zerissenheit), which Hegel understands as the “perfected
language of this entire world of cultural maturation as well as its true
existing spirit” (§519). This language is precisely what unfolds in Rameau’s
Nephew, which can be understood as the completion of cultural maturation
in a vertiginous reversal of all values, and at the end of the ancien régime it
already appears to herald both the Marxist analysis of universal com-
modification and Nietzsche’s diagnosis of nihilism: everything is for sale, all
values can easily be converted into their opposite, and the only reasonable
stance is to understand and affirm the complete bankruptcy of reason.
Now, could we not say that the inevitable conflict of Creon and
Antigone, and even more so the inversions and reversals of Diderot’s
dialogue on the eve of the contemporary age, are indeed akin to the
movement of dialectics itself? Not only do they portray the necessity of
Zerrissenheit and the movement of Verkehrung, but they in fact provide
Hegel with two of the most powerful ways to think dialectics: the idea of a
necessary and determinate contradiction, and the possibility of an infinite
negativity. In this they propagate their effects far beyond the confines of the
analysis of “the religion of art,” and they indicate the presence of the
artwork as what I have called a tool, an operator, or perhaps what we,
following Adorno, could call a “model.” This second position of the work,
no longer an object simply outside of, in front of, before philosophical
discourse, in fact testifies to the way in which Hegel’s language does not
simply dominate its objects, which is how he is often perceived, and
particularly so with respect to artworks, but allows them to unfold their

161
 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN

own analytic powers inside a philosophical discourse that is itself in search

of its own definition.

162
 Understanding as Translation
How to read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

On some problems of reading philosophical texts

Reading is translating. This claim seems to contradict Wittgenstein’s insight

that understanding is not interpreting. But whereas Wittgenstein is right
with respect to immediate language use, for example when we understand
spoken language by reacting or answering correctly in a communicative and
cooperative way, the situation with writing is different, as was already
known by Plato. The problem is this. Texts written in a phonematic way
(using alphabets) codify only a certain abstract or formal way of speaking.
This means that the actual situation of the speaker is always somehow
missing for the reader as a resource for anaphorical references and rele-
vance. On the other hand, the writer does not know the circumstances of
the reader, in particular he cannot guard against obvious misunder-
standings of his intentions and, what is more dramatic, he cannot foresee
diachronic changes in linguistic meaning or use.
As a result, readers and writers always share a cooperative task which is
in some respects more complicated and more demanding than the
corresponding task of speakers and hearers—if we think of real dialogues
and not of merely preaching speeches, which Plato rightly identifies (in his
Phaedrus) with paper texts. Similar to a preacher, the writer has to do his
best to make his text readable for a large and personally unknown audience,
given the general system of language and knowledge he lives in. The reader
has to support the text by reading it with charity. And this always means, at
least in part, to interpret the text, i.e. to translate it into the language she, the
reader, would have to use if she wanted to express the same thoughts
(contents, meanings) in her situation, her time, given her language and her

163
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

general knowledge. Correcting malapropisms, as we do it in spoken

discourse as well, is only a minor point here. Taking possible changes of
semantic systems of default inference including all sorts of connotations
into account, is already a more serious matter.
Things get even more complicated when the topics of the texts are not
just object-related, as will or should be the case in all sorts of object-
centered science. In fact, science is first and foremost a cooperative
linguistic enterprise. A necessary condition is logico-linguistic regimen-
tation. Only on its ground can we presuppose more or less well-defined
notions of “synonymy” as a relation of “equivalence in relevant meaning”
between different scientific texts. In a much less rigid way, the same holds
for a given language use and implicit practice of understanding in different
vernaculars, i.e. in “natural” or rather “spoken” languages. The problem is
that, by necessity, the language of philosophical reflections on science,
concepts, and languages rather resembles the use of vernaculars than of
terminologically already regimented languages, and that the ideal of a clear
and exact philosophical terminology as well as the idea of transforming
philosophy into a science with a limited topic or domain of objects to be
investigated miss the very point of the enterprise of philosophical reflection,
as Plato and Aristotle very well knew. In contrast to this, from Kant to the
present day, the possibility and usefulness of formal terminology in
philosophy seems to be overestimated and its limits undervalued. In the
twentieth century, only Heidegger and Wittgenstein seem to have noticed
with due emphasis the deep difference between, on the one hand, what we
try to show in philosophical texts—that they can never do more than help
us to reflect on forms of our practices—and, on the other hand, what we say
about already well-determined objects or topics in the sciences.
As a result of this insight—which unfortunately has not yet reached the
stage of public knowledge—in the understanding of philosophical texts, the
reader first has to figure out at least the main topic and focus, the particular
relevance and particular modes of speech, especially when she reads
historical philosophical texts.
Even in the object-related case of the sciences, reading historical texts is
almost the same as reading texts written in another language. This is much
more so for philosophy. Or rather, we should be aware that this may be so,
even though we might not feel it at first. At first, we usually assume that we
still speak the same German language as, for example, Kant and Goethe,
Fichte, Schelling or Hegel. But this is not so. Many words have changed

164
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

their use, and, what is worse, some conventions and acceptability conditions
concerning grammatical constructions have changed. The same problem
hold for Descartes and French. Much more complicated problems for
understanding, however, are created by philosophical texts that use a
language in the same way Spinoza used his Latin. In the corresponding class
of authors belong Oswald Spengler, Ferdinand Tönnies, Otto Weininger,
Martin Heidegger, and, believe it or not, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Before we
even can start to evaluate the possible truths of, or in, these texts, we first
have to clarify how to read them. And even though all authors mentioned in
the last list certainly write in German, they all make fairly creative use of the
German linguistic system—which allows, like ancient Greek though unlike
a less “abstract” language as English—for arbitrary nominalizations and
explicit topicalizations of all possible parts of speech. As a result, many
readers who are not used to more abstract or, as they claim, bureaucratic
means of expression, accuse such writers of using idiolects or ascribe ontic
hypostizations to them. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
In order to show this, we might, for example, look at Carnap’s claim that
Heidegger’s talk about “das Nichts” was metaphysical. For Carnap’s
judgment is, in the end, not much more than a sign that he does not inter-
pret the text correctly. For any reader who knows a little bit more about the
German used in philosophy at that time sees more or less immediately, first,
that Heidegger’s logical concern was much more similar to that of Russell
and Carnap than these authors knew: Together with Brentano and
Meinong, Heidegger knew that we have to distinguish between being a
mere object of talk (like numbers, unicorns, or dead or non-existing kings
of France) and being something that really exists. Hence, the basic question
of critical philosophical ontology is not, as Quine claims, what can be a
value of a variable in a formal domain of speech, but what it means to refer
language and practice to the real word. In citing the locus classicus of
modern philosophy, Leibniz’s question, Why or on what ground is there
some real thing and not rather nothing? Heidegger shows and says among
other things, first, that we should not read the “why” as asking for a
sufficient efficient cause, but for the form of distinguishing between real
things and possibilities from merely verbal entities and possibilities; second
that the word “nothing” always is relative to an already presupposed
domain of objects we talk about. If we say, for example, that the expression
“the largest prime number” refers to nothing, we do not mean that it refers
to something called “nothing.” Rather, the word nothing denies the

165
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

possibility of any proper reference. Things get even more complicated when
we say that in empty space there is nothing or when we say that there is
nothing feared in Angst, because Angst as a Stimmung is not intentionally
directed in contradiction to, for example, fear of sickness or death.
Nobody says that Carnap and his followers should like Heidegger’s
expression “Das Nichts nichtet” or be content with it. But since it is clear
that Heidegger was himself more than aware of the fact that the sentence
contains the neologism “nichten,” Carnap should better put more effort
into a sufficiently accurate attempt to understand what Heidegger obviously
wants to express. For Heidegger tries to say in his words more or less the
same as what Russell, Carnap and all other “anti-metaphysical” analytic
philosophers are proud of saying themselves—and even more than this, as
we can see in a sentence like the following: “there is nothing angst refers to
whereas fear always fears some specific possibility.” Of course, talking about
angst and fear here is talking about concepts together with the real
phenomena they distinguish, not to any hypostatization of entities or
powers. As a result of these short remarks on how to read Heidegger we can
already see: Carnap is barking up the wrong tree. My claim is that most
criticism of Hegel in traditional analytic philosophy is of the same nature.
In fact, it is about time to re-evaluate the “on dit” or hearsay of
twentieth-century analytic philosophy about what has to be criticized as
transcendent metaphysical claims (about nothing, without reference and
content) and what is only a lack of linguistic understanding when it comes
to different ways of abstracting and topicalizing by using the linguistic form
of nominalization. Intuitive resentment against allegedly all too grand and
speculative or “metaphysical” sentences that want to say something about
“the West” or “the East,” “the community” and “society,” “man” and
“woman,” about Being-in-the-world or an allegedly non-thinking science is
no real help here. The same holds for a priori resentments about talking
about objective or absolute spirit and things like understanding, reason,
desiring, in order to come closer to the topic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit, at least with our examples. From a really logical point of view, which,
as such, goes far beyond merely formal logic, the understanding of such
abstract or generic expressions is, ironically, fairly similar to the under-
standing of mathematical ways of speaking, from talking about the
equilateral triangle in elementary geometry to, say, specific differential
equations. In both cases it does not make sense to ask to express “the same
content” in everyday language, whatever the late Wittgenstein sometimes

166
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

seems to say against this view. He is right, however, to criticize any

overestimation and awe which some readers manifest with respect to
generic or structural talk or abstract mathematical theories. In the same
vein, if we are linguistically competent, we neither should abuse nor mis-
understand, nor avoid generic statements about “the German(s)” or “the
Roman(s),” to say nothing of “the Jew(s).” The same holds for talking about
“understanding,” “desiring,” “reason” or “objective spirit.” We rather should
face the problems we have when we use such ways of talking, or else we also
do not understand claims about “the world,” “the logical form of sentence”
or “the superstition” (of our belief in causality), as we read them in Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.
The first reason for the difficulties of understanding generic sentences
about general structures has to do with the fact that we today generally tend
to read a sentence, say, about “the German(s)” or “woman” or, to take some
other examples, “the mountain lion” or “the triangle” in a universal, not in a
generic way. Precisely this change in our attitude towards nominalizations
and a lack of understanding of their generic use is the culprit behind most
misunderstandings especially of German philosophy from Kant to
Heidegger.
In a universal reading, these expressions refer to the set of all singular
Germans or women or triangles. In fact, today, this reading comes to mind
first. It always was a possible reading. But in earlier times, every sufficiently
learned person knew that it was not the only one. For in generic sentences
about the German(s) or the mountain lion we express only default truths
when we say, for example, that the mountain lion eats rabbits or that Nazi
Germany had a biologistic (mis)conception of nationhood and talked in an
incredibly sweeping way about a struggle for survival of the German “Volk.”
But not all mountain lions eat rabbits. And not even a majority of singular
Germans supported Nazi ideology. Nevertheless, the rather primitive “folk-
science” of biologism was a leading motive for many of the terrible deeds
committed by and in Nazi Germany.
Just as no structured social and political history of institutions, ideas and
people can be told without generic sentence, but only singular stories about
lives, opinions, happenings and deeds of singular persons, no philosophical
analysis of conceptual structures can be expressed without generic
sentences. Hegel addresses this very topic by thinking about the logical
status of “the speculative sentence(s).” As such, any speculative sentence is
generic. And its “truth” is of a specific form. In order to show why for such

167
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

sentences neither the principle of the excluded contradiction nor the

excluded middle or third holds, we can compare the speculative sentences
with a tradition of moral advice from Seneca to La Rochefoucauld, La
Bruyère or Gratian, and all corresponding proverbs. There are, for example,
deep “dialectical truths” in the Greek sentence gnothi seauton in the sense of
“be self-conscious” or in the Latin sentence festina lente, “proceed slowly.”
But sometimes our judgments and actions have to be fast, not slow, decisive
and courageous, not too cautious, timid, or self-reflective. The first to notice
the need for dialectical considerations on the generic status of sentences
about concepts and virtues like those of temperance or justice, was,
obviously, Socrates, as we can see in Plato’s dialogues. Hegel belongs to the
still very few readers of Plato who realize precisely this. As a result, he sees
that we have to learn to use generic sentences in a logically correct way. This
holds for philosophy as well as for the sciences or everyday discourse. And
this means that we cannot use generic sentences in a schematic or
formalistic way, as if they could be read as universal quantifications about
all singular cases. We cannot even use all the geometrical truths about, say,
straight lines and plane surfaces, when we use them in judgments about real
(solid) things or (“empty”) space. We can use them only on the ground of
general experience—Erfahrung—which is not to be confused, as is often
done in English texts, with a set of prior sensations and perceptions of some
kind. Experience as Erfahrung is rather a practical competence.
This is already a central remark on Hegel’s speculative analysis of mind in
his Phenomenology. The topic of the book is, altogether, not only in the
beginning, the experience of consciousness (with itself, namely in a properly
understood self-consciousness), in German: Die Erfahrung des Bewusstseins
(mit sich selbst, nämlich im Selbstbewusstsein). What Hegel wants to articulate
and make explicit are levels of generic insights that develop by making these
experiences explicit. We make these experiences in using the concepts that are
the results of previous generic understandings; and we develop these
understandings in critical reflections by noticing the problems and one-
sidedness of any merely schematic or thoughtless use of previous
understandings. As a result, all the following (speculative, generically
reflective and in the end logico-conceptual) sentences about mind are totally
true: Mind in the sense of the competence of human sapience (necessarily) is
(inner) sensation (Empfindung), (outer) perception (Wahrnehmung), con-
sciousness (Bewusstsein) and understanding (Verstand). Mind (necessarily) is
(reflective) self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein), (subjective) reason

168
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

(Vernunft) and objective spirit (Geist). Nevertheless any of these sentences

can be at the same time wrong, namely in the sense that they all are one-sided
and express only necessary conditions for full human sapience. Therefore, and
because of their generic form, each one of them can be easily misunderstood.
Only if we take them together do we arrive at a true picture: Human sapience
is much more than (animal) sensation. It is more than (animal) perception,
guiding (animal) desire. It is also much more than the (important but by far
not sufficient) faculty of following rules (in Kant’s and Hegel’s sense of
understanding or Verstand)—and so on.
But there is another problem as well. In order to avoid possible
misunderstandings of generic sentences we might think that we better avoid
these sentences altogether. In fact, much of Wittgenstein’s philosophy can
be seen as supporting this view: The misunderstanding of speculative or
philosophical reflections would indeed come to an end if we stopped doing
philosophy. If this were what Wittgenstein said, he would be the unhappy
protagonist of modern Zeitgeist and its naïve understanding of language,
which asks for verbalized expressions, avoids abstract nominalizations,
prefers showing something by examples to saying it in the mode of all too
grand and easily misunderstood generic sentences, and does not see that
examples usually can be properly understood only together with the generic
sentences they illustrate, just as allegories and metaphors are less
illuminating than analogies: In analogies we transfer the model-structure of
some Urbild to the realm we want to talk about by saying what the
comparison between the Urbild and the realm can show us. In other words,
we use the same words and sentences in describing the structure of the
Urbild and of the intended realm, such that the result of any analogy is a
kind of (more or less strong or weak) isomorphism, as, for example, the
isomorphism between Plato’s polis and psyche, Hegel’s state and soul, and
Plato’s and Hegel’s society and mind.
If I am right, we not only have to translate Hegel’s German into French,
English or, for that matter, Swedish, but we have to translate it into the
idioms of modern German. Of course, we cannot do this in a narrow and
formal sense of the adverb “literally.” What we do instead is to add
comments to the original text.
This is all the more important since we cannot separate concepts form
generic knowledge. In fact, this is one of the most important, and deepest,
of Hegel’s own insights: the very meaning of words and sentences depends
on the general knowledge of a time expressed by generic sentences.

169
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

Therefore, we should bracket the times: by this we create epochs in the

literal sense of a series of bracketing of times. Only with reference to an
epoch may we assume that meanings are more or less fixed. In other words,
the idea of eternal or synchronic meaning is always an idea that abstracts
from the relevant epoch and from the fact that there always are diachronic
changes of meaning that depend on the development of our knowledge, our
institutions, and our forms of life. As a result, without interpretation, and
without systematic comparisons between different epochs with different
forms and norms of inferential meanings we cannot identify any relevant
sameness or identity of content and meaning. This is the very insight of
Hegelian dialectics: There are no eternal meanings. But there are
possibilities of identifying identities of relevant content despite many
changes in detail, if we only keep to the appropriate and relevant
equivalence relations. Thus, Greek democracy is, in a sense, the same as
modern democracy, and comes with similar problems, even though in other
respects modern democracy is fairly different, much more republican in a
Roman sense and much more monarchic in the sense of an absolute power
of some executive representative, at least for some time.
If we are not aware of logical facts like these, we cannot understand
historical texts properly. One part of the corresponding method of
interpretation is defining appropriate epochs in which relevant forms of
practice and contents of language remain essentially the same. And this
means to make the particular forms of an epoch explicit, “die Zeit auf den
Begriff zu bringen,” which includes an explication of the relevant epochal
changes that take place between such epochs. This is, I take it, Hegel’s own
insight into what I would like to call “historical hermeneutics.”
But if we must “translate” Hegel into contemporary philosophy (not into
a particular idiom as the proposal of the organizers suggest when they talk
of “phenomenology, critical theory, analytical philosophy, etc.”), how
should we do it? I would not like to talk about “a philosophy” as the proper
“heir” of Hegelianism, because I do not think it useful to use any “ism,”
perhaps not even in textbooks for beginners. The question why Hegel has
nevertheless used a label like “absolute idealism” for his contributions to
philosophy is, of course, interesting. But it must be answered under the
presumption, or rather insight, that there is only one philosophy, and that
the idea that one can have one’s own philosophy just as a hairdresser has his
and a car dealer has his is absolutely misleading. In fact, belief-philosophy is

170
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

not philosophy. There is a categorical and absolute opposition between

philosophy and any belief in “isms.”
There is no way of reading Plato or Aristotle, Kant or Hegel, “imme-
diately,” without considerable knowledge about the peculiar problems they
wanted to solve, the peculiar projects they wanted to further and the
peculiar knowledge, language, and perhaps contentions (“prejudices”) they
took for granted, and perhaps had to take for granted. Therefore, translating
Hegel into contemporary philosophy, or rather, commenting on his texts in
the language of contemporary philosophy, not only makes Hegel “more
readable” for those unfamiliar with Hegel’s idiosyncrasies, but is a necessary
step in understanding the content of what he says. Contents exist only as
that which remains invariant when we say the same thing in different
words, be they different words in one language or in more languages. Hegel
himself always was occupied with seeing the same general idea behind all
changes of particular forms. Teaching differences, as Wittgenstein famously
prefers to an allegedly Hegelian teaching to see identities is a nice thing only
in its proper place. If there were no transpersonal identities in meanings we
never could understand anyone else. Without transcending our own epoch
and province we cannot understand others’—Plato’s, for example.
Therefore, we better distinguish the necessity of translation and
interpretation of texts from any assimilation of their considerations and
arguments to our present concerns. That is, we should not project
contingent interests of today arbitrarily onto Hegel’s text. Like Pippin,
Pinkard or Brandom, we rather should try to show that modern thoughts
are already found in Hegel. As a result, we do not need anachronistic
projections of our own concerns onto Hegel’s text. In fact, I show at many
places how Hegel’s thought were influenced by his intelligent reading not
only of Kant (and the British philosophers) but especially of Greek
authors—of course by also showing how to reconstruct the appropriate
reading of Greek thought. In other words, my concern is not so much to
discern “what is living and what is dead in Hegel,” even though I would not
read Hegel at all if I did not find his thoughts interesting for us today.
However, there is no understanding of a text, no interpretation and
therefore no translation of a non-trivial text without risks. The reason is
clear. No human in the world can say sufficiently important and general
(generic) things in such a clear and distinct way that there is only one way
of understanding him or his texts. The cooperation between speaker and
hearer, writer and reader is always free. Hence, there is always the risk the

171
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

speaker or writer says or would say: No, I did not mean this. By this, he says:
No I do not want you to infer these things you infer from what I have said. I
did not want your thoughts to go this way. But if a speaker or writer is dead,
he cannot help his texts by judgments like these, as Plato famously has seen
and said. The responsibility is now in our hands. And now, of course,
different readers today will disagree in their comments. But there is no truth
of the matter left that goes beyond our free and open debate which
interpretation or translation taken as a proposal of reading might be best—
and for which reader. At first, every voice of any interpreter has equal
weight, if it conforms in its arguments to the state of art of reading the
corresponding texts properly, i.e. if the interpreter uses the virtue of
accuracy (Bernard Williams) in a sufficient way.
The art of reading is a technique with more or less clear criteria for
evaluating the results without all too general words like “depth” and similar
hand-waving. The aspects to be judged are: Do we understand the issues?
Which parts of the text remain closed territory, mere letters and sentences,
without clear conditions of truth and orientation? The feeling of depth
often is not much more than the judgment that I do not understand the
text. There is nothing valuable in this, not even with respect to poems. In
other words: There is a difference between the inferential power of a text
and the clarity of an interpretation.
Hence, in a good translation and interpretation, nothing “essentially
Hegelian” can get lost. But, of course, it might always be a good advice to
look into the original texts, just as a judge often better consults the law than
his intuition.
I do not believe that Hegel’s German, or Heidegger’s German, for that
matter, was anything near an idiolect. The truth is rather this: These authors
exploit some possibilities of using German in a way that presupposes a fairly
high standard of philosophical and linguistic competence. And of course,
they introduce some terminology of their own, as any original writer must
do, without turning the resulting “scientific idiom” into an idiolect. When
Hegel, for example, uses nominalized verbs as in “das Erkennen/the
knowing” or, much more difficult, “das Meinen/presuming,” it is absolutely
crucial that he refers to performative attitudes, not results, as they are
expressed in the “normal” substantive form of languages which stylistically
do not allow for free nominalizations as German and Greek. Therefore,
“knowledge,” “cognition” and “opinion” would be misleading translations,
at least in part. But I certainly understand that we have to balance

172
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

gracefulness and accuracy, or else no one would enjoy reading the text. But,
on the other hand, Hegel certainly was absolutely reckless in this, just as
Kant and Heidegger: They all have turned question of stylistic grace down if
this seemed to be required by the form of precision they strove for.
Questions of translations and interpretation of a philosophical author
like Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger cannot be separated from questions concern-
ing the main topics and aims, the overall structure and the path of the
argument(s). With respect to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, this seems to
me even more true than with most other texts in the history of philosophy.
Here we have to grasp the idea of the book as a whole. Is it a kind of story
about the (ontogenetic and or phylogenetic) development of human
sapience and the modern, self-conscious intellect, as people following Marx,
Lukács, Kojève down to the Frankfurt school openly or implicitly assume?
Or is it rather a series of deconstructions, namely of wrong, but widespread,
ideas about ourselves, our knowledge of and practical reference to things,
our knowledge of and practical attitudes to ourselves, the individual and
social, or rather institutional, status of understanding, reason, intelligence,
and “spirit”?
This leads us to the question of Hegel’s relation to Kant and to the
agenda of Hegel’s Phenomenology. In both respects, the traditional histor-
iography of philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth century, mainly
influenced by Neo-Kantians and analytic philosophy, does not get things
right at all.

The structure of Hegel’s phenomenology of the human mind

In his criticism of Brandom’s approach and my own attempts to read

Hegel’s texts as contributions to an analysis of concepts—or of “the
concept” as the system of all conceptual knowledge, for that matter—which
adds a modern logico-linguistic or semantic interpretation to this concept-
analysis, Herbert Schnädelbach somehow sneeringly talks about a
“deciphering” (Entzifferung) of Hegel. Obviously, he thinks that such a
scrupulous reading and interpretation of singular sentences is not
necessary. But such a judgment presupposes that it is clear what Hegel is
talking about and where he is heading. But it is precisely this that is not the
case. As a result, Schnädelbach’s own effort of reading Hegel, like many
others, does not go beyond the already well-known hearsay about Hegel,

173
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

which is the product of the 19th and 20th century’s fights between different
groups of Hegelians and anti-Hegelians, with Adolf Trendelenburg or
Bernard Bolzano as early, Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper as later critical
non-readers.
There is of course no space here for a detailed deciphering or inter-
pretation of long passages in Hegel’s Phenomenology. I rather sketch the
general structure of his thought and argument.
In a sense, Hegel begins with a concern about Kant’s basic principle of
transcendental apperception and Descartes’ res cogitans, namely with the
question what it means that any Vorstellung, that is, any presentation or
representation of something in the world, must be able to be accompanied
by some “I think (of it).” The concern is with the question of what thinking
is and who the thinker is. And, indeed, this remains as unclear in Kant’s
texts as it already had been in Descartes’. Part of the second question is how
to understand the I, the self, the subject of thinking and consciousness.
The two questions, what thinking is and who the thinker is, that is, how
to understand the subject of thinking, are the two leading questions of
Hegel’s enterprise in his Phenomenology. The first question is crucial since
we should stick, as Hegel famously says, to the age-old insight that thinking
marks the difference between the mode of being of homo sapiens sapiens
and that of the merely animal. The second question is crucial because we
know all too well about the traditional ontic hypostatizations of the human
mind as a subjective-individual soul in traditional “rational psychology,” of
a general-generic spirit as a god in traditional theology.
Our two leading questions concerning thinking and its subject now turn
into one question, if we ask how to understand consciousness and self-
consciousness properly. Precisely this is the leading question of Hegel’s
Phenomenology. In fact, the book is, from the beginning to the end of the
project and the text, a phenomenology of (self-) consciousness. In order to
understand this claim properly, we must, however, be aware of the fact that
Hegel uses words like “understanding,” (subjective, i.e. individual, singular)
“(self)consciousness” and “reason” (also) as (sub-)labels for limited aspects
(or concepts) of spirit. That is, “spirit” is his word for comprehensive (self)
consciousness, which, as such, contains all forms of singular and generic
(implicit and explicit, practical and reflective) knowledge about the essential
forms of our human life. As practical know-how, spirit also contains the
experience of putting these forms into practice. And precisely as practical
know-how or competence, spirit is not just the object of our self-conscious

174
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

reflection, but the mental subject behind all our singular and individual
actualizations of (forms or types of) judgments and actions. But this,
together with the insight that mind or spirit, fully understood, is as much an
I or self as it is a societal, institutional and, as such, generic, We is already a
remark about the final results of Hegel’s enterprise. This also holds for the
corresponding sentence in Hegel’s chapter four on self-consciousness. Only
later, in the chapter with the title “Spirit,” does Hegel make clear in which
sense spirit is the generic We and that this We is, in a sense, the actualized
form of a joint human life. This form is not a utopian idea or a mere
thought, as the English use of the word suggests. It rather is Plato’s highest
idea: It is the idea of the good, true and beautiful, the idea tou agathou. As
such, it is the actually used system of norms which is presupposed in all
judgments, the real idea of all proprieties, all kinds of normative judgments
about correctness, rationality, truth, and reason.
According to my reading, Hegel sees here, long before Heidegger and
twentieth-century pragmatism, the importance of the ontological difference
between the We as an object of discussion, speech, and reflection and the
We as the subjects of practical life, of mental attitudes, judgments and
actions. And he sees long before George Herbert Mead and his followers
that everyone is very much dependent, in his mental capacity, on the
possibilities for thinking and speaking, acting alone and acting together,
that are provided by the tradition and social context he lives in, i.e. by the
we-group he is part of. This holds even for the possibilities of developing
new forms and norms of judgments and actions. As a result, the concept of
freedom and liberty must be understood in its relation to the situation we
are in if we want to understand it realistically and leave utopian imagin-
ations of “absolute” freedom behind as well as counterfactual ideas of total
pre-determinations of our judgments and actions. In this sense, it is right to
say that understanding freedom of thought and action correctly is the main
task of Hegel’s philosophy. Hume and Kant aimed at the same goal, but
Hume missed it because his picture of man collapses into a picture of a
clever social animal, whereas Kant’s transcendental arguments for free will
as a noumenon mystifies the reality of freedom and action, just as Descartes
and Leibniz had done before.
One of the crucial problems of reading Hegel’s Phenomenology now is
how to understand Hegel’s method. What is “phenomenology” in his sense?
And how do we have to reconstruct the corresponding argumentative
procedure? For one thing is clear: Hegel does not just describe the

175
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

phenomena which are explained by mental powers, faculties, or

competences. Nor does he look for basic certainties, as Husserl’s phenom-
enology, at least in its Cartesian phase, still did. Moreover, Hegel is not
content with Kant’s way of arguing in favor of transcendental
presuppositions. Even though it is true that in any human act the specific
powers of human mind are involved, just to presuppose these powers, as
Descartes and Kant did, does not suffice to understand them. What we need
is an account of the reality of mind and spirit, which is much more than,
and something different from, a mere argument for its necessary
presupposition. We need an assessment of how the different forms of our
own mind or mental powers appear to us. We need an account of the
development of our own attitude to these powers. We need a reconstruction
of the steps, in which we make our mind and spirit explicit, in which self-
reflecting consciousness or self-consciousness develops. Such a reconstruct-
tion has to proceed step-wise or dialectically because in each step only
certain aspects of mind and spirit are explicitly articulated. As a result, any
reconstruction of the logical steps in the development of self-consciousness
also has to de-construct the failures, mistakes and one-sidedness of each
step in the development of self-consciousness.
Moreover, Hegel sees that theology, natural psychology including
physiology, and philosophy compete, in a sense, in their claim of finding the
key to a correct understanding of mind and spirit. That is, they all are
disciplines that take self-consciousness as their topic. Theology uses the
expressive form of myths; psychology the form of self-observation, and
philosophy conceptual analysis. To make a long story short, the result of
Hegel’s analysis here is this: Any correct understanding of self-conscious-
ness and any deep enough knowledge about who we are and what human
mind is must to a large contain degree some social philosophy and
philosophy of history, and, of course, some deeper understanding of
conceptual analysis than we find in traditional formal logics from Aristotle
to Frege and their followers down to twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
As a result, Hegel’s phenomenology is destructive rather than constructive.
In other words, Hegel de(con)structs all the first intuitions about what
thinking or mind or (self)consciousness is. This holds at all levels. It starts on
the immediate level of the empiricist idea that consciousness is awareness, i.e.,
a direct perceptual relation either to some object of my inner sense (like sense
data and the like) or to physical objects of the outer world (as alleged causes
of my sensations and perceptions). In other words, Hegel radically

176
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

deconstructs, first, the myth of the given in the idea of sense-data we see so to
speak avant la lettre in Hume and Berkeley, and in Russell, Carnap or Ayer,
and then, in an immediate second step, the idea of impressions that would be
causally produced by physical objects, which we find as early as Locke, and
which extends to Quine’s epistemic naturalism, including all the followers we
cannot and do not have to name here.
In the third chapter, which stands under the title “consciousness,” Hegel,
the great foe of immediacy (Sellars), questions the idea that there could be
an immediate intentional relation of consciousness between me and the
objects of the world. Any such referential relation is, by necessity,
conceptually mediated. Therefore, it presupposes some general and generic
linguistic and practical competence, as we shall see in the end.
But the first step in Hegel’s argument that leads us away from identifying
consciousness with immediate awareness or attention consists in an insight
into the difference between a merely habitual attitude of desire and an
already self-reflexive intentionality and its self-conscious intentions. Self-
consciousness as a necessary aspect of human consciousness results from
the need to control the proprieties of proper intentional relations. I have to
control these properties, even in the case when I control or judge about the
truth or normative correctness of your claims, judgments, or actions. As a
result, it sounds as if this “I” or “self” is some kind of higher or spiritual
entity called self-consciousness which is the master of all judgments and
actions, addressed under the word “soul” as the subject or master of
thinking and under the word “will” as the subject or master of action. The
body seems to be a slave to this spiritual master. This is an age-old picture
of the relation between my self-consciousness and my body.
Hegel shows, according to my reading of his most famous passage of the
Phenomenology, the chapter on master and slave, that this picture is not
only wrong, it is inconsistent and incomprehensible. Unfortunately, the
usual reading which jumps too far ahead into a social reading of joint self-
consciousness, of acknowledging other persons (and not just norms and
proprieties) misses this crucial point and thus loses track of Hegel’s
deconstructive arguments in the self-consciousness chapter. In this reading,
it becomes totally unclear why stoicism should be wrong in identifying the
master with pure thinking, without actions, and skepticism because of its
thoughtless pragmatism. A reading of the whole book as a metaphorical
Bildungsroman or even a mere kaleidoscope is the unhappy consequence of

177
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

these defective interpretations of the chapter on (subjective, individual) self-

consciousness.
Of course, it is not easy to make sense of every move in Hegel’s text. His
transitions to new chapters or aspects are particularly hard to understand.
But it seems clear to me that the transition from the chapter on self-
consciousness to the chapter on reason rests on the insight that any
judgment of correctness or truth presupposes a distinction between me as
the singular subject and normative reason to which I appeal when I say that
something is true, right, correct, or—reasonable. The problems of the
chapter on reason are, first, to overcome any mystifying dualism between
sensibility and reason. “Reason” is no transcendent instance we can appeal
to. But what is it then? How can I know about reason? How can reason
guide me? And what is it that guides me, if the guide is reason?
One aspect of the chapter on reason is leaving mental subjectivity and
solipsism behind and accepting the objectivity of reason. In contra-
distinction to Kant and most Kantians, Hegel realizes long before Nietzsche,
Foucault and the postmodernist critique of the self-declared ages of Reason
and the Enlightenment that any appeal to reason can hide a version of
subjectivism that is even more dangerous than immediate egotism. The
problem is that in a certain moral stance, the stance of Kant’s “practical
reason,” I have, allegedly, the last word about the norms and forms of
reason. Thus, I become the master of reason.
Hegel sees that the deep mistake in Kant’s philosophy rests on an
overestimation of consistency. From the fact that my proposals about what
could be jointly acknowledged moral norms are consistent with what I do, it
neither follows that what I am doing is ethically right, nor that the norms
that could be consistently accepted already can function as criteria for actual
moral judgment.
In other words, Hegel’s attack against the “Age of Reason” or Age of
Enlightenment and against Kant as the philosopher of pure theoretical and
pure practical reason rests on a logical insight, which, in the end, is as easy
and true as it is important: Consistency and sincerity are by far not enough.
Consistency and sincerity are necessary conditions for true and good
judgments and actions. But they are by far insufficient for the truth and the
ethical goodness of the judgment or action.
This insight corresponds to the important thesis that Hegel had
defended in his habilitation in Jena. The thesis says: Contradictio regula veri,
non-contradictio falsi—“Contradiction is the limiting rule for what is right,

178
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

non-contradiction for what is wrong.” That is, non-contradiction or

consistency can only be used as a delimiting criterion or demarcation for
what is wrong. It is not sufficient as a criterion of truth.
Only now can we understand the basic points in Hegel’s attack against
the “position” of “Reason”: What is reasonable in the sense that it is a
possible form or norm for judgment and action is, as such, not yet true or
good. Hence, the mere possibility of a consensus, say, about a proposal P to
give a normative answer to questions about where people should be allowed
to smoke or how to treat embryos, just to name two example, does not
suffice at all for using P as a norm. In other words, it is not possible
acknowledgments but real agreements that are the foundation of ethical
judgments. The same holds for the criteria of “theoretical” truth.
The subjectivity of the standpoint of reason is the subjectivity of mere
sincerity. Sincerity is never enough. On the contrary, sincere well meaning
without objective accuracy (Bernard Williams) tends to self-righteous
hypocrisy. Therefore, the standpoint of morality, which Hegel identifies
with Kant’s practical reason and its alleged basic principle, the categorical
imperative, appear from the standpoint of real ethics as the upshot of
subjectivism. Hegel’s irony becomes sarcastic when he says that the
principle of moral reason thus turns out as a principle of ethical evil. The
road to hell is not only paved with good intentions. It is guided by post-
signs that say: We all should act in such a way W that I or we consistently
can think that all could and should act according to W. Of course, a
defender of Kant may say that he did not mean his principle of morality or
practical reason this way. But the point is what Kant actually says, not what
he means in the sense of what he should have said, given the problems of
interpretation Hegel puts his finger on.
The standpoint of reason is not objective enough. The objectivity of
ethics (Sittlichkeit) only rests upon real institutions of cooperation in
practice and joint evaluation of judgments. Hence, not subjective moral
reason but “the state” understood as the overall system of really instituted
norms and forms of proper judgment and action is the (generic) “subject”
of Sittlichkeit, including all ethical evaluations. In short, not subjective
reason but the system of epistemic and ethical institutions is the spirit of all
laws and norms, laws and norms of truth and knowledge as well as of the
ethical good and aesthetically beautiful. Of course, if we understand Hegel’s
talk about the state in an all too concrete way as the merely political system,
his analysis and judgments turn problematic. But there is no question that

179
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

Hegel’s talk about the state has to be read under the guidance of the logico-
rhetorical form or trope of synecdoche, just as Heidegger’s Sorge (care, cura)
or Wittgenstein’s Sprachspiele (language games). To defend, and develop,
this thought and claim in detail would, however, require much more time
and space.
In the chapter on reason, Hegel deconstructs another attempt to
overcome the mystifying idea of a subjective mind by an objective turn, the
turn from talking about the soul to talking about the brain. This turn
continues at first the course of argument Hegel had developed in the
famous passages on master and slave: The real master cannot be the
(stoicist) paper tiger of pure thinking. It must be the acting body. From this
it is a short step to assume that my self and my brain are essentially the
same and that consciousness and self-consciousness consist of the images or
picture the brain creates about the world at large and the person’s body in
this world.
Hegel ridicules this account, as it is still today the leading account of
physical and physiological empiricism and scientism. He replaces the soft
brain by the hard skull and shows that no observation of living or dead
brains or skulls can show us the “mental” or even “intelligent” parts and
processes in our behavior and action. In other words, brain watching is, as a
scientific approach to understanding the human mind, as superstitious and
wrong as trying to find the areas of Haydn’s real musical genius or Lenin’s
alleged political genius by investigating his skull.
Mental processes can only be understood in the context of a social
philosophy or theoretical (micro- and macro-) sociology, not in the context
of physiology or merely behavioral psychology. These are the results of
Hegel’s analysis, if we translate them into modern language: The mind is a
function of our human social life. It is defined by competent participation
in social institutions like language and learning, ethics and legal justice,
aesthetics and religion, as tiles for whole domains of actions and judgments,
e.g. ranging from dealing with primitive symbols to using mathematical
theories in the sciences. In short, mental competence is, in the end, social
competence. Hence, the way that leads from any mystifying religious or
philosophical psychology into physiology and cognitive psychology is
misleading.
Nevertheless, Hegel supports the turn from any mystical domain of the
mental to real processes. We cannot or should not just presuppose a
spiritual mind or transcendent soul. But the turn to bodily parts is a bad

180
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

idea. The brain as such is as dead as the skull. And despite its relative
magnitude with respect to the rest of the body, it is not the human brain
that makes us humans intelligent but the specific use of it by also using our
tongue and ears, our hands and eyes, in social institutions involving
showing things, playing together, speaking a language, and developing
verbally articulated knowledge and science.
From here it is no great leap to the basic or rather most general
structures of objective spirit, to the informal communities of families and
clans and the formal society and the state. The first is the domain of the
sacred, divine, implicit law of kinship. The state is the domain of the
positive, and positively and negatively sanctioned law of universal free
cooperation in the polis and the state, in a civic society with its institution of
property, free division of labor and all the norms of habeas corpus, of bodily
integrity (which define murder, robbery and kidnapping as crimes). Let me
here only remark that Popper totally misses Hegel’s point when he
overlooks Hegel’s radical liberalism in his analysis of property rights.

Desire as a performative self-relation

In the following, I turn from saying to showing, from talking about reading
Hegel to presenting a paradigmatic interpretation. I choose the beginning of
chapter four in his Phenomenology. The chapter starts with a reflection on
the results of the previous chapters: “In the previous modes of certainty,
that which is true for consciousness” (i.e. what I would judge as true for
example on the ground of my own perception) “is something other than
itself.” This is so, because I always perceive or know of something else than
what I am, as we rightly say and believe on this level of reflection. “But this
notion of truth” (I prefer this translation to “the Notion of this truth”)
“vanishes in the experience of it” (§166).1 The reason is that in a second
round of reflection we must ask what we mean by the object that
allegedly is directly perceived or known about.
“What the object immediately was in itself—i.e. at first mere being in
sense-certainty, then the concrete thing of perception, and finally, for
the Understanding, a Force producing sensations or other reac-
tions in observers or other objects—proves to be in truth, not this at

1
All translations from Hegel’s Phenomenology are by the author.

181
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

all.” In other words, we realize that what we take as the object perceived
is neither a bundle of sense data nor an object or a power in itself. Such a
power would transcend the realm of brute, real and “holistic” (i.e. always
rough-and-ready) experience. In other words, what we (say that) we
perceive is always already conceptually formed in a fairly complicated
and holistic way. We cannot neatly separate sense data; nor can we
distinguish “pure” conceptual truth from general experience. We may
add that, in a sense, this is already an insight of Kant. Hegel’s rather
uncharitable reading tends to overestimate Kant’s admittedly unhappy
talk of a thing-in-itself, as, by the way, most readers of Kant do.
Hegel now continues: “instead, this in-itself turns out to be a mode in
which the object is only for an other.” Despite what I have just said about
Kant and his thing-in-itself, Hegel’s rephrasing must be taken as a deep
insight. For he says more clearly than Kant that the very notion of a thing-
in-itself, Plato’s kath’auto, refers only to things of thought. These things of
mere thought belong to a realm of things produced by mere thinking. They
are therefore, as such, merely “intelligible.” They are merely abstract entities.
They exist only for an other, namely for us, not for themselves.
In other words, it would be semantic nonsense to assume that things-in-
themselves could produce anything in the world causally (if only subjective
sensations). As a corollary, no possible god can produce anything because
any such god is merely a thing-in-itself, i.e. a mere thing of our thought or
our ways of talking. To assume the contrary would be as nonsensical as to
say that numbers could produce thoughts causally.
What we do, however, is this: We “attach,” so to speak, to our very
concept of any object of possible perception the force of producing the
sensations by which we can perceive the object. But here, Hegel’s insight
into the concept of force is not at issue. I am rather focusing on the
difference between consciousness and self-consciousness.
“Consciousness is to itself the truth.” […] “With self-consciousness, we
have therefore entered the native realm of truth.” The emphasis rests on
“native” or “einheimisch.” The immanent domain of truth belongs to self-
consciousness insofar as the topic is knowledge about the very concept of
knowledge and truth: “It is a kind of knowledge of itself in contradistinction
to knowledge of other things.” Hegel says, moreover: “Let us look now how
the form or gestalt of self-knowledge appears.”
For Hegel, consciousness or Bewusst-Sein is actual knowledge in the
sense of “being of the opinion that,” or of the “belief.” He distinguishes it as

182
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

a kind of mental state from self-knowledge, which he characterizes as a

“return from being something else to itself” (Anderssein: some other thing
to which I might refer). In fact, the very word “self-consciousness” expresses
this return in an act of reflection in the sense of the Latin reflectere animum.
In any self-knowledge, I have to identify something I know of, like my
body or my behavior, with being myself, leading my life. At first, it does not
matter if this identification is immediate or mediated. In self-knowledge, I
turn myself into an object or topic of my knowledge. This knowledge about
myself may partly include my own knowledge about something else. In
other words, self-consciousness may have consciousness of something else
as its object. This is a first step. The second step is this: I take or treat or
acknowledge my own opinion about myself as true. This means that I
represent myself in a kind of self-model—first step—and acknowledge the
model as fitting to what I am—second step.
The term “subject” often stands for what I am, the term “object” often
stands for the topic (“subject-matter”) of my judgments. And acknow-
ledgement is a performative attitude either to judgments (about myself) or to
actions (which might be my own or not). Now, the question arises as to
whether a judgment about myself really is true, i.e., if it should be
acknowledged, or if I only take it to be true. This very difference shows the
normativity of truth (of any alleged knowledge or self-knowledge).
Sometimes, I can make self-models and judgments about myself true,
namely by acting in a certain way. In this case, self-knowledge turns into
active and practical self-determination. But at first, the question of self-
knowledge tends to be answered by an “unmoving” (bewegungslos)
tautology, as in Fichte’s formula I = I. Such a formula does not help us,
however. It does not represent a judgment that has content. This is so
because it cannot be false. It is in a sense not a meaningful speech act. It is
not a move or action in our language game. It cannot be even understood as
having a definite and well-determined meaning. Contrary to this, practical
self-determination in intentional actions can be understood much more
easily. In fact, it is self-determination, not mere verbal self-comments, that
should guide us when we ask what self-consciousness or self-knowledge is. I
take this to be the deepest insight of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and his
analysis of self-consciousness, together with his insight into the “ontological
difference” (as Heidegger will call it) between the forms of being an object of
thinking and the forms of actively living a life. In other words, being in the
sense of performing forms of life includes being the personal subject or

183
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

actor of my actions and speech acts. This is the very topic of Hegel’s talk
about what he calls “Gestalten des Bewusstseins.” These are the forms of our
performances in our actualizations of our competence to live a human life.
In such performances—in being who I am, so to speak—self-knowledge or
self-consciousness turns into practical reality.
The explication of the concept of self-knowledge finds in this practice
and action the corresponding Fürsichsein. This Fürsichsein should be taken
as the reality or realization of the concept of self-knowledge in practical life.
As such, it is different from merely abstract Ansichsein, which is only what
we talk about, not what is in-and-for-itself. As a result, self-knowledge is “in
and for itself” conceptually determined self-knowledge and self-conscious-
ness, and, as such, not at all immediate, but mediated by generic knowledge
and by concepts that apply to my own life. The only feature of immediacy
we can find here is the utterly trivial immediacy of the performance itself: In
judgments about myself, I (myself) do and must judge. Hence, in any case
of full-fledged self-knowledge, I should be conscious of, or know about,
what self-knowledge is conceptually, and how the very concept, the content
of our talk about self-knowledge and self-consciousness, relates to sensibil-
ity and understanding, rationality and reason, mind, soul, and spirit, i.e.,
not only to the corresponding concepts, but to what they are concepts of.
The generic object of consciousness is the world in its whole extension.
The generic subject of being, on the other hand, is the unity of the (implicit,
practical) self, which is, in a way, already self-consciousness. On the other
hand, we can, and should, distinguish the self, which I am, from self-
consciousness or self-knowledge, which takes the self, at least formally or
grammatically, as the object or topic of its reflections and explications.
The question now is: What does the unity of the self consist in? How do
we understand the unity of the subject’s self-consciousness? And how do we
grasp the relation between the self (i.e., of me in the sense of whoever speaks
right now and right here) and the world at large? Hegel’s answer is: This
unity is desire altogether (“Begierde überhaupt”). But why on earth is it
desire that provides us with the unity of the self?
The answer might be this: Desire corresponds formally to what
Heidegger later calls Sorge, care. Desire or caring comes with a peculiar
modal time-structure: Formally, I desire to be somebody else than I am
right now already when I desire to get something. At the same time, desire
is not only a relation to things around me, but a kind of self-relation. Desire
or caring are the structures in which I relate to a possibility, to what I

184
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

possible could be, and perhaps will be, namely when the desire gets fulfilled.
In this sense, desire is a structural moment of the temporal unity of living a
life, being a self, of subjectivity. In fact, Hegel sees, and wants us to see, the
intrinsic, conceptual connection between desire and life: “Consciousness, as
self-consciousness, henceforth has a double object: one is the immediate
object, that of sense-certainty and perception, which however for self-
consciousness has the character of a negative; and the second, viz. itself which is
the true essence.”
I do not like the English translation “essence” of Wesen, even though it is
customary to read Wesen as the German word for Latin essentia. This word
Wesen refers to being myself as I am, not as I picture myself. This is being
an ousia or Wesen in the sense of Heidegger’s Being, which means for living
beings that they live their life in performing “things” in behavior and action
that are typical for such a life.
Hegel continues that this “essence” or Wesen is present in the first instance
only as opposed to the first object. “In this sphere, self-consciousness
exhibits itself as the movement in which this antithesis is removed, and
the identity of itself with itself becomes explicit for it.” “But for us, or in
itself, the object which for self-consciousness is the negative element has, on
its side, returned into itself, just as on the other side consciousness has
done. Through this reflection into itself the object has become Life. What
self-consciousness distinguishes from itself as having being, also has in it, in
so far as it is posited as being, not merely the character of sense-
certainty and perception, but it is being that is reflected into itself, and the
object of immediate desire is a living thing.”2
This sentence wants to achieve too much, as Hegel’s sentences often do.
But the essential thought is fairly straightforward: The unity of the subject
or person is not defined by actual memory. Lockeans claim this down to our
times. Think, for example, of Derek Parfit. Memory is, like perception,
merely a “theoretical” attitude; and it is, like perception, usually rather
passive, and momentary. The unity of the subject or person is the individual
life of an individual person, not just some bundles of merely immediate and
present feelings, sensations, or memories. In fact, the merely actual feelings

2
“Der Gegenstand, welcher für das Selbstbewusstsein das Negative ist, ist [...] für uns
oder an sich ebenso in sich zurückgegangen als (=wie) das Bewusstsein andererseits. Er
ist durch diese Reflexion in sich Leben geworden. Was das Selbstbewusstsein als seiend
von sich unterscheidet [...] ist in sich reflektiertes Sein, und der Gegenstand der
unmittelbaren Begierde ist ein Lebendiges” (108f).

185
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

of self-certainty are not even close to being enough, at least if we overlook

the intrinsic time-structure of desire in particular, life in general.
In fact, desire already shows something about the basic temporal
structure of animal life. In it, actual life relates to future life. The desire of a
subject is, in the end, to live the life of a subject and to continue this life as
well as possible. In this sense, the object of desire of a living being is, in the
end, its life itself: Most readers think that Hegel is talking about some other
living being here. But this is not so, if we read the text with some
understanding of the arguments provided.
In other words, it is the living being itself that, in its continued life,
satisfies its desire. It does so, of course, not without the means of the
surrounding world. Satisfaction as such consists in the peculiar way in
which life goes on. This way is not arbitrary. Usually, satisfaction of desire
consists in a life that corresponds to the form of life of the living being, just
as satisfaction of hunger consists in eating (not, for example, in getting
blows on the stomach: this counter-example goes back to Wittgenstein).
Satisfaction of thirst consists in drinking, etc.
Hegel rightly turns here from the generic individual to the generic
species or genus, even though we might at first be surprised by this turn.
The turn is made explicit in the text a little later: There, Hegel explains that
the unity of human life consists in the unity of living a human form of life,
to which a certain form of “practical reflection on life” is an essential part.
One aspect or moment of this reflection is merely subjective self-certainty
and self-awareness; another aspect is already much more complicated, it is
conceptually mediated, and detached, self-knowledge.
In the end, we find a unity in what we verbally distinguish: a unity of life
as the real ongoing process, its generic form, which is actualized in a
particular way in the very process and some awareness or better conscious-
ness of this process. Hence, we must distinguish, and at the same time
identify, the process and its form, the process and reflection, the subject of
the process and reflection, and me as the object I talk about with myself as
the subject who is leading my life.3

3
“Thus the simple substance of Life is the splitting-up of itself into shapes and at the
same time the dissolution of these existent differences; and the dissolution of the
splitting-up is just as much a splitting-up and a forming of members. With this,
the two sides of the whole movement which before were distinguished, viz. the passive
separatedness of the shapes in the general medium of independence, and the process of
Life, collapse into one another.”

186
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

This is the way I read the following sentence: “Life points to something
other than itself, viz. to consciousness, for which Life exists as this unity, or
as genus.”4
The unity of performing (my) life in the process of (my) life and present
(actual, immediate) reflective self-awareness or attentive reference to myself
in my surroundings constitutes the subjectivity of us (as higher animals). We
are at the same time “origins and results of our behavior” in the “practical
world of our life,” as Kambartel aptly says somewhere; and we notice this at
least implicitly, in the mode of more or less immediate self-awareness.
This unity of myself as a living being with the “object” of my immediate
self-awareness and reflective subjectivity is, according to Hegel “the simple
species or genus” of the living being in question. This is so, because it belongs
to the form of life of the higher animals in question, with their subjectivity.
The species, genus or life form of the species (of humans or lions, for
example) does not exist as such in the singular process of life (“die
Bewegung des Lebens selbst”), because a singular animal can be mutilated,
sick or only sleeping.
It is true, in reality there are only the individual animals. But the life of
each of them refers implicitly to the limited possibilities of living a good life
as a member of the species in contradistinction to the possibilities of a bad
life, of mishaps and monsters. In this sense, we should not forget that my
own life refers in a way “onto something other than what I immediately
am,” namely, as I read this passage, to a good life. But at first, Hegel
identifies this “other” with “consciousness, for which it is this unity as
species” or the form of a good life as a member of the genus.
I read this difficult passage or thought thus: In any immediate self-
knowledge or self-awareness of mere subjectivity, which we share with quite
a number of higher animals, there already is a certain self-control relating to
whether or not the normality or satisfaction conditions of a sufficiently

4
“Sie (also die Einheit) ist die einfache Gattung, welche in der Bewegung des Lebens
selbst nicht für sich als dieses Einfache existiert; sondern in diesem Resultate verweist
das Leben auf ein Anderes, als es ist, nämlich auf das Bewusstsein, für welches es als
diese Einheit, oder als Gattung ist.” “Dies andere Leben aber, für welches die Gattung als
solche und welches für sich selbst Gattung ist, das Selbstbewusstsein, ist sich zunächst
nur als dieses einfache Wesen, und hat sich als reines Ich zum Gegenstande [...]. Das
einfache Ich ist diese Gattung oder das einfache Allgemeine, für welches die
Unterschiede keine sind, nur, indem es negatives Wesen der gestalteten selbständigen
Momente ist; und das Selbstbewusstsein hiermit seiner selbst nur gewiss, durch das
Aufheben dieses Andern, das sich ihm als selbständiges Leben darstellt; es ist Begierde.”
(111).

187
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

good life of being a member of my species are fulfilled: This either/or

allows, of course, for a broad range of (intermediary) cases. The only point
is that we often realize (“know”) that such conditions are not fulfilled, and
often we realize that they are fulfilled. As such, this control is, in its present
immediacy, always a mere subjective control of satisfactions or non-
satisfactions of merely subjective desires in the sense of animal appetites.
Such a desire or appetite includes, negatively speaking, the avoidance of
pain and other sensations of pain (Schmerzempfindungen). The attitudes are
given in the natural life form of the species. The immediate attitudes or
dispositions of behavior consist in being immediately led by avoidance of
pain and the striving to fulfill my desires. In other words, desire and pain
show the very core of subjectivity and reflective self-awareness in a quite
fundamental way.
So we see that Hegel’s desire is a title for the life-supporting appetite of
subjectivity. Only higher animals have it. Plants do not, at least if we do not
ascribe to them spiritual properties arbitrarily. Plants are not subjects, not
because they are not individuated as higher animals, but because the form
of their life, their Aristotelian kinesis, is totally different. They do not show
the same form of movements in pursuing goals and desires and avoiding
pain as animals do.
In short, Hegel uses the title-word “desire” as a synecdoche, as a label for
the actual unity of life performances of living beings that have, and show,
subjectivity. The fundamental self-certainty now can be seen thus: It is
realized in immediate states of pain and desire and the “feelings” of satis-
faction or the end of pain or uplifting of pain.
But now, Hegel talks about some “other life,” “which as such is the
species.” What does it mean that its Fürsichsein is the species? In what sense
is this other life self-consciousness? And what does it mean to say that as
such it is “at first only as this simple being (Wesen),” which has itself as a
pure I as its object (“sich als reines Ich zum Gegenstande”)?
I admit that it is not too clear what the expression “this other life” refers
to. Some readers think that Hegel is already talking about two persons here.
But I read the consideration and arguments differently. In the end we shall
see that and why thinking and comprehending, intention and action are
possible only in a we mode. When Hegel here already talks about us, he
wants us not to loose sight of this goal. The difficult task of interpretation is,
therefore, to read the sentence “Self-knowledge achieves its satisfaction in
another self-consciousness” in its context appropriately.

188
 UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSLATION

In order to do so, I start with a short reflection on the nature of an

“immediate desire” in the sense of an animal appetite—in contradistinction
to the nature of an intention which is always already mediated by a con-
ceptual determination of what is intended and how the intention governs
the action in my attempt to fulfill the intention.
Desire as such is only an immediate, present, state of desiring. If it is
already directed to an object, it presupposes some awareness and attention.
This is still a rather meager concept of consciousness. It is, so to speak,
animal consciousness or mere vigilance. As such it is present directedness to
objects in the actual world around me. The faculties of awareness, attention
and vigilance do not differentiate yet between (higher) animals and men. In
contrast to this, intentions are embedded in trans-present actions by which
we pursue the goal of fulfilling presently perhaps inhibited desires and wishes.
An animal and sometimes humans, too, have a desire for something, if
they want to incorporate it somehow directly. Ownership is a kind of
institutionally extended incorporation, as Hegel rightly sees. I want some-
thing, if I want to make it somehow into something that is my own.
In both cases, the goal is, as Hegel says, to deny or sublimate the
difference between being something other and being my own.5
It might appear plausible to think already here of some fight between
different persons for property, power, and respect. In a sense, the path to
this thought is not too long. It would lead us to a life and death struggle
insofar as property rights are a question of power and dominance: Personal
power, especially the dominance of masters over slaves and serfs, can
survive only by some backing by threats of sanctions. Only fear of
punishment or even death can move the slaves to obey the order of the
master. On the other hand, in a certain way, they obey the order freely,
because there is always the option of preferring death. But only if we
thought that an order in which there are masters and slaves, and in which
we are the slaves, were a wise order, would the fear of the master possibly be
the beginning of our wisdom. But it is precisely this that Hegel says. So what
does it mean?
I prefer to read the passages thus: Hegel is interested in the conceptual
difference between (animal) desire and conceptually guided intention,

5
This is my reading of “Aufhebung des Andersseins des Gegenstandes der Begierde bzw.
des Willens.”

189
 PIRMIN STEKELER-WEITHOFER

between immediate appropriation of things (for example in catching and

eating) and actions in which an immediate motivation by desires is inhibited.
In the end, Hegel’s analysis of the sociality of reason goes much deeper
than Marx, Kojève, Habermas, or Honneth think. For Hegel sees that
without this sociality of reason there is no thinking and no intentionality at
all. Marx does not seem to see this social grounding of reason and
intentions. Like Hobbes, Marx starts with persons that are able to act
intentionally, as if social institutions come later, as a kind of joint decision
to cooperate in a certain way. As a result, the dependence of personal
competence on the social surroundings is underestimated.

190
 Hegel in Swedish
BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

In the realm of great philosophy Hegel is no doubt the only one with
whom at times one literally does not know and cannot conclusively
determine what is being talked about, and with whom there is no
guarantee that such a judgment is even possible.

[Im Bereich großer Philosophie ist Hegel wohl der einzige, bei dem man
buchstäblich zuweilen nicht weiß und nicht bündig entscheiden kann,
wovon überhaupt geredet wird, und bei dem selbst die Möglichkeit solcher
Entscheidung nicht verbrieft ist.]
Theodor Adorno
“Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel”1

Hegel’s language is—it has been said time and again—untranslatable.

[La langue de Hegel est—on l’a dit maintes et maintes fois—intraduisible.]

Alexandre Koyré
“Note sur la langue et la terminologie hégéliennes”2

The first thing to ask about translating Hegel might well be: why bother?
Hegel’s thought is so difficult, his writing, particularly in the Phenom-
enology, so complicated, that anyone interested in understanding him deeply

1
Theodor W. Adorno, “Skoteinos oder Wie zu lesen sei,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), 326. In the collection of texts translated by Shierry Weber
Nicholsen as Hegel: Three Studies (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1994), 89. I will be citing Adorno’s text with two
page numbers: the first the page number in Gesammelte Schriften, the second the page in
Nicholsen’s excellent translation. The English passages cited below are all from
Nicholsen’s translation.
2
Alexandre Koyré, “Note sur la langue et la terminologie hégéliennes,” Revue
Philosophique, 1931. Republished in Etudes d’histoire de la pensée philosophique (Paris:
Gallimard, 1981), 175. All page references are to the text published in Etudes. Trans-
lations of Koyré are my own.

191
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

may well need to embark on a multi-year journey of Hegel research, and

anyone willing to embark on this multi-year journey who does not read
German generally decides to begin first with the much shorter, easier
journey of learning to read the language in which Hegel wrote.
And how many people are interested in understanding Hegel’s thought
“non-deeply”? Or more to the point: can one understand Hegel’s thought
non-deeply? In Germany one speaks of a particular kind of educated,
though non-academic person: the “reader of Goethe” (der Goethe-Leser). In
the English-speaking world the equivalent might be the “reader of
Shakespeare.” This is someone who enjoys reading brilliant, difficult classics
despite not having the background to be able to plumb all their depths.
Would the reader of Shakespeare, with no background in philosophy, be
able to make sense of the Phenomenology, even if accurately translated into
his own language? Would the reader of Strindberg? (Would, for that matter,
as Siep asked, the reader of Goethe, who doesn’t even need a translation?)3
The Phenomenology is famous for containing brilliant analyses of
particular cultural phenomena and historical events whose brilliance is
thought to be sufficiently self-contained that they can be enlightening to the
reader of Goethe on their own—for example the comments on Rameau’s
Nephew, or the account of the significance of the tragedy element in
Antigone. One might be able to benefit by reading these analyses in
isolation, like reading a poem or two from Leaves of Grass, but it would be
risky to say that any of these passages or analyses in the Phenomenology tell
us much about Hegel’s thought.
In fact, anything other than the whole of the Phenomenology (and,
Hegel himself would be quick to add—the whole of his system) will fail to
yield the whole of Hegel. Karl Popper, more than a mere “reader of
Goethe,” failed to grasp Hegel in his The Open Society and Its Enemies
precisely because he based his diatribe largely on Scribner’s Hegel Selections,
not on a reading of any of Hegel’s complete works.4
Obviously, the conviction of the translator is that anything can be
translated, even the Phenomenology. The fact that it continues to be
retranslated into the same languages on a regular basis shows that the

3
Ludwig Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes: Ein einführender Kommentar zu
Hegels “Differenzschrift” und zur “Phänomenologie des Geistes” (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2000), 9.
4
Or so claims Walter Kaufmann in From Shakespeare to Existentialism: An Original
Study (Princeton: Princeton University of Press, 1959), 98–99.

192
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

challenge is enormous, and that success has so far has been regarded as
imperfect. But this does not mean the book is, as Koyré claims, literally
untranslatable. And translating Hegel into Swedish entails far fewer losses
than translations into other languages. Here I’d like to explore some of these
losses by way of a comparison to translation problems that arise in translating
German texts, and, specifically, the Phenomenology, to English (with a few
limited comments on translations to French added along the way).

Hegel’s difficult language

Before addressing the difficulties specific to the translation of Hegel’s

German to Swedish or any other language, we should briefly look at why
Hegel’s language itself is so challenging.
As Terry Pinkard points out in Hegel: A Biography, Hegel’s German
wasn’t always so tortuous. A change in his attitude towards writing took
place rather suddenly when Hegel was approaching thirty years of age.
Hegel’s initial career ambitions centered on his becoming what today
might be called a public intellectual. He was an “activist of letters,” inspired,
as were so many of his friends and colleagues, by the French Revolution,
and above all by modernity itself.
Hegel started to realize, influenced to a great degree by Hölderlin, that a
new age required a new idiom, a new style of writing; in particular, it
required a style that challenged the reader, made him work to create his
own meaning, made him participate in the fashioning of this new, modern
world.5 Hegel did not want to be an essayist telling the people how and what
to think. That wouldn’t be appropriate for the modern age. “What [...]
matters to the study of science is that one take the rigorous exertion of the
concept upon oneself” (§58),6 writes Hegel in the preface to the Phenom-
enology. What’s more, Hegel came to see philosophy as an activity that not
necessarily everyone could share in. (Perhaps, then, worrying about the
reader of Shakespeare or Strindberg would be irrelevant either way.) Shortly
after his arrival in Jena, Hegel wrote, in Kritisches Journal der Philosophie,
the journal he started with Schelling, “Philosophy is by its nature something

5
Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 82.
6
All references to the Phenomenology in English are to paragraph numbers in Terry
Pinkard’s translation (2008), currently (2011-07-27) available online at:
http://web.mac.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html.

193
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the
mob.”7 Whatever his new kind of writing would be, it would not be
unchallenging.
Another important influence was Schelling, who encouraged Hegel to
move to Jena to take part in the burgeoning philosophical life at the
university there. The decision to move to Jena marked the final abandonment
for Hegel of the goal of being an essayist, a popular philosopher. Instead,
Hegel would become a systematic, wissenschaftlich philosopher à la Fichte.
The systematicity, along with the abandonment of the popular style in
order to force the reader to fashion his own meaning—his own new,
modern world—are of course manifest continually in the Phenomenology
(with the partial exception of the preface, which is in fact written in a style
more popular than that of the rest of the book—even if the matters being
addressed are of concern to a limited few). The systematic presentation of
the self-education of consciousness was a new way of doing philosophy
(even if much of the strategy of the Phenomenology came from Schelling
and especially Fichte), and it itself required that the text be strange, and the
demand that the reader participate actively simply added to the peculiarity
of the work.
But while Hegel’s turn to systematic philosophy and his forcing the
reader to participate actively in the creation of meaning had an influence on
his writing, the more important factor was of course speculative philosophy
itself, which by its very nature is an attack on normal language use. Hegel is
quite explicit about this, saying, for example, that the nature of the
speculative judgment “destroys” the distinction between subject and
predicate that is contained within the very structure of the normal
judgment or proposition (§61). One might best put it the other way around:
not that speculative philosophy is an attack on normal language use, but
that abnormal language use, in the service of speculative philosophy, becomes
the means of attacking traditional, non-speculative thought, or, in the
Phenomenology in particular: the unnaturalness of Hegel’s use of language is
a way to attack the “naturalness” of the position of natural consciousness.
Hegel’s (largely) intentional mis- or “other”-use of language, his
obscurity, finds one of its greatest defenders in Adorno—himself,
paradoxically, a master of crystal clear (if exceptionally challenging) prose.

7
Cited in Robert Stern, G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Logic
(London: Routledge, 1993), 198f.

194
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

In the essay “Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel,” Adorno contrasts the

striving for certainty and clarity of Descartes with the obscurity of Hegel,
lauding the latter.
Skoteinos was an epithet for Heraclitus, and means “the obscure one.”
For Adorno, the obscurity of Hegel’s writing is a virtue, not just the virtue
one makes of an unrelated necessity, but itself something necessary: there
was no other way for Hegel to write, given the nature of his philosophy.

There is a sort of suspended quality associated with his philosophy, in

accordance with the idea that truth cannot be grasped in any individual
thesis or any delimited positive statement. Form in Hegel follows this
intention. Nothing can be understood in isolation, everything is to be
understood only in the context of the whole, with the awkward
qualification that the whole in turn lives only in the individual moments.
In actuality, however, this kind of doubleness of the dialectic eludes
literary presentation, which is of necessity finite when it unequivocally
states something unequivocal. This is why one has to make so many
allowances for it in Hegel. (“Skoteinos,” 328; 91)

It is not simply that nothing can be understood in isolation, but that the
very essence of Hegel’s philosophy is process; Hegel’s thought is always a
thinking:

[The form of Hegel’s texts] is the complete opposite of Nietzsche’s

maxim that one can only write about what one is finished with, what is
behind one. The substance of Hegel’s philosophy is process, and it wants
to express itself as process, in permanent status nascendi, the negation of
presentation as something congealed, something that would correspond
to what was presented only if the latter were itself something congealed.
To make an anachronistic comparison, Hegel’s publications are more
like films of thought than texts. (ibid., 353; 121)

The substance of Hegel’s philosophy is process, but, what’s more, Hegel’s

own expositional method was “processual” in the sense that he, more than
any other major philosophical figure, seemed always to be thinking aloud;
he sought to capture the processual nature of his philosophy, but seemed
also to want to express the very process of his own thinking, however
halting, tentative, and, of course, self-correcting it may have been. This
could naturally give the impression of sloppiness or inconsistency in the use
of terms, or even a kind of “sovereign indifference” to language (ibid., 342;

195
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

109), but Hegel was partly just sharing with the reader the very dialectical
activity that is at the core of his own philosophizing.
Adorno expresses surprise that language wasn’t even more important for
Hegel as an explicit theme, and, more specifically, as a manifestation of
truth, given, in particular, that Hegel was a contemporary of Humboldt
(ibid. 350; 117–118). Koyré, on the other hand, highlights those places—
relatively few though they may be—where Hegel does indeed seem to stress
the importance of language, for example where Hegel tells us that we can
“see language as the existence of spirit” (§654, cited in Koyré, 187).
Whether or not language can be seen as the existence of spirit, it is the
equivalence of history and logic—and, for Koyré, therewith the equivalence
of history and language—that means that translation involves translating a
whole history, a whole culture, into a different history and culture. This,
finally, for Koyré, “is the reason we cannot translate Hegel,” or

at least why it is so difficult to do so. Not because his language is

“imaginative and poetic” and full of emotional elements. Hegel himself
did not take much to these forms of language that “suggest the ineffable
and inexpressible.” For him—and according to him—the ineffable and
inexpressible did not have any kind of value. What he prized above all
was the clarity, “the clear concept that leaves nothing unrevealed,” and
expresses what is deepest in man, his “very nature,” which is thought
and which is spirit. Synthesis and summation or, if one prefers, inte-
gration of moments (concepts, forms, Gestalten) of the past in the
“present”—such is the Hegelian “concept.” But if the history of human-
kind, to the extent that it realizes that the history of spirit is one, to the
extent that it realizes itself, particularizes itself, differentiates itself,
breaks apart. History is one, like thought and spirit, but the histories, like
peoples and languages, are different. And that is why dialectical thought,
the concept, representing a moment of this evolution, though repre-
senting it within the particularity of a language, cannot—generally
speaking—be translated by a term of another language. Is it because
history, the past that always becomes “present,” would not be the same.
That is the reason why “the abstract language of French philosophy”
cannot translate the concrete language of the Hegelian dialectic. And
this is also the reason why the best commentary on Hegel remains, for
the time being, a historical dictionary of German.8

8
Alexandre Koyré, “Note sur la langue et la terminologie hégéliennes,” 204.

196
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

This extremely interesting claim by Koyré would actually take us into more
general questions about the very possibility of translating any text, not just
translating Hegel. Koyré was of course writing in a French context, and
makes clear here, at the end of his essay, that his thesis about the
impossibility or extreme difficulty of translating Hegel is about translating
Hegel to French specifically. I will let our colleague Jean-Pierre Lefebvre
comment on the challenges of translating Hegel into a language like French,
distant as it is from German. (Myself, I may be too distant from French, too
“Germanic,” both historically and educationally, even to be able to grasp
Koyré’s thesis, without a historical dictionary of French.)
Translating Hegel into a Germanic language may be a very different
matter. It may be that a “historical dictionary” of English or Dutch or
Swedish would be so close to a historical dictionary of German as to render
Koyré’s concerns about French irrelevant to these other languages.
Let us turn to an exploration of how the close relationship of Swedish to
German affects the quality and “feel” of translations into Swedish, by way of
examples and comparisons with English (and some references to French).

Hegel in Swedish

Hegel claimed in 1805 that he wanted to “get philosophy to speak German,

and German, philosophy.”9 The challenge of translating Hegel into Swedish
could thus be understood as the challenge of getting the philosophy that
Hegel got to speak German, his particular German, to speak Swedish.
In the second preface to the (Greater) Logic, Hegel himself makes clear
that the match between his philosophy in particular, speculative philosophy,
and German was exceptionally strong, and suggests that getting each to
speak the other, whatever he might have thought the challenges were when
he was younger, would be relatively easy. In part this is because German
words have a rich breadth of multiple meanings, but, more importantly,
because they often contain within themselves opposite meanings, which
itself is something in which “one cannot fail to recognize a speculative spirit
of language” (“ein spekulativer Geist der Sprache nicht zu verkennen ist“)—

9
Quoted in Will Dudley, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 234. In practice, this meant using
words that many in Hegel’s day would have taken not to be German.

197
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

and which permits a certain pleasure for thought, even if, for the
understanding, such oppositions are nonsensical.10
There is the additional factor that the different meanings, and even the
“constitutive” meanings of the words gleaned from their roots, and the way
these roots relate to one another, are in general more obvious to a German
reader, because German is, in Vico’s sense, a highly “original” language, in
the sense that the original, more concrete ways of expressing things are still
evident in the words used today. One example is the German word for an
object.11 The normal word for a physical object in German is Gegenstand,
which is made up of roots a German speaker knows, because the roots
themselves are also words in German: gegen (against) and Stand (standing,
position, etc.). So an object is something standing against one. English is an
extremely non-original language, and the word object is a perfect example
of its non-originality. For an English-speaker who doesn’t know Latin, ob
(against) and ject (part of the past participle of the Latin word meaning to
throw, obicere) mean nothing.12 The “speculative spirit” of language,
especially the play between the concrete and the abstract, can indeed be
missed in English and other non-original languages, at least in the case of
many words.
We might expect these traits to be found, at least to some degree, in all
Germanic languages. If they were, at least some aspects of translating Hegel
to a different Germanic language would be easier than translating Hegel to
non-Germanic languages. And so it is with Swedish, but, perhaps
surprisingly, it is much less so with English.
Anyone who knows German, Swedish, and English will be struck by the
similarity of German to Swedish. English almost seems like a Romance

10
“Viel wichtiger ist es, daß in einer Sprache die Denkbestimmungen zu Substantiven
und Verben herausgestellt und so zur gegenständlichen Form gestempelt sind; die
deutsche Sprache hat darin viele Vorzüge vor den anderen modernen Sprachen; sogar
sind manche ihrer Wörter der weiteren Eigenheit, verschiedene Bedeutungen nicht nur,
sondern entgegengesetzte zu haben, so daß darin selbst ein spekulativer Geist der
Sprache nicht zu verkennen ist; es kann dem Denken eine Freude gewähren, auf solche
Wörter zu stoßen und die Vereinigung Entgegengesetzter, welches Resultat der
Spekulation für den Verstand aber widersinnig ist, auf naive Weise schon lexikalisch als ein
Wort von den entgegengesetzten Bedeutungen vorzufinden.” Werke, vol. 5, Wissenschaft
der Logik I: Die objektive Logik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 19–20.
11
See Michael Inwood’s interesting discussion on this in A Hegel Dictionary (London:
Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 8.
12
Earlier, a different word was proposed, for example by Luther, as a translation for
Latin’s obiectum: Gegenwurf, the roots of which correspond exactly to ob-ject.

198
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

language by comparison, especially if the comparison is between texts

dealing with abstract matters, where the English text will tend to have many
words of French or ultimately Latin origins. But, curiously, English and
German are actually in the same subdivision of the Germanic language
family, the West Germanic languages, whereas Swedish is in an entirely
different subdivision, the North Germanic. These subdivisions are of course
based on early historical developments, and ignore later divergences and
convergences. In the case of the split between the North Germanic
languages (Norse or proto-Norse) and the rest of the German languages,
mutual intelligibility was lost perhaps some 1500 to 1200 years ago. The
relative similarity of Swedish to German today is the result of later
convergence between the Scandinavian languages (though this applies only
to a very limited extent to Icelandic) and Middle Low and High German,
primarily because of the trading activities of the Hanseatic League. Old
English, on the other hand, started rapidly moving away from German,
mostly because of the influence of Latin and Latinate languages. (Norse had
also influenced Old English, but the influence on vocabulary was limited,
and involved words for everyday objects, not abstract terms. Its most
significant influence was in the dramatic simplification of the case system of
Old English.) Estimates of the number of words in English that are of
Germanic origins are generally between only 25% and 30%. More than half
of the words in English are from Latin or a Langue d’oïl (including French
and Norman). But when looking at words actually used—especially for
everyday matters—as opposed to counting words in a dictionary, English
does of course seem extremely Germanic. Take the following sentence: “I
went to school. I saw my friend. We sat under an apple tree by the old house
and talked.” Every word is Germanic, and even recognizable as closely
related to its contemporary German counterpart (aside from tree, which
comes from Old Norse; the word for tree in modern German, Baum, is
related to the English word beam). But while Hegel does speak of trees and
houses—the meaning of “das Hier ist nicht ein Baum, sondern ein Haus,”
for example, could perhaps even be guessed at by a native English speaker
who knows no German—mostly he speaks of extraordinarily non-everyday
things, things that are thus often expressed with non-Germanic terms in
English, especially once we leave the here and now of sense-certainty. This
is why the challenges of translating Hegel into Swedish are so different from
the challenges of translating Hegel into English.

199
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

Consider the first sentence of the preface, in its French, English,

German, and Swedish variants.

Les explications qu’on a coutume de donner dans une préface, en tête

d’un ouvrage, pour éclairer les fins que l’auteur s’y est assignées, les
motivations qui sont les siennes, et la rapport que cet ouvrage entretient
selon lui avec les autres traités antérieurs ou contemporaines qui portent
sur le même objet, semblent non seulement superflues s’agissant d’un
ouvrage de philosophie, mais même, compte tenu de la nature de la
chose, inadéquates et contraire au but poursuivi.13

In the preface to a philosophical work, it is customary for the author to

give an explanation—namely, an explanation of his purpose in writing
the book, his motivations behind it, and the relations it bears to other
previous or contemporary treatments of the same topics—but for a
philosophical work, this seems not only superfluous but in light of the
nature of the subject matter, even inappropriate and counterproductive.

Eine Erklärung, wie sie einer Schrift in einer Vorrede nach der
Gewohnheit vorausgeschickt wird—über den Zweck, den der Verfasser
sich in ihr vorgesetzt, sowie über die Veranlassungen und das
Verhältnis, worin er sie zu andern frühern oder gleichzeitigen
Behandlungen desselben Gegenstandes zu stehen glaubt—scheint bei
einer philosophischen Schrift nicht nur überflüssig, sondern um der
Natur der Sache willen sogar unpassend und zweckwidrig zu sein.

I en filosofisk skrift förefaller det inte bara överflödigt, utan enligt sakens
natur till och med opassande och ändamålsvidrigt, att som brukligt är
låta en förklaring i ett förord föregripa skriften, beträffande det syfte
författaren förelagt sig, liksom bevekelsegrunderna samt det förhållande
i vilket han anser sig stå till andra tidigare eller samtida behandlingar av
samma ämne.

Though the fundamentally different word order of each of the four makes it
difficult to see, the English sentence, at least viewed via the nouns and
adjectives, looks more like the French than the German or Swedish. There
are numerous cognates—coutume/customary, préface/preface, auteur/author,
motivations/motivations, etc.—and many of the other words could easily

13
G. W. F Hegel, Phénoménologie de l’Esprit, trans. Jean-Pierre Lefebvre (Paris: Aubier,
1991), 27.

200
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

have been exchanged for cognates (inappropriate could perhaps have been
inadequate, or the French could have had impropre, the English improper.).
On the other hand, of course, the more common words, the hammer and
nails of the sentences—prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and common
verbs like to be (in, the, to, a, it, for, and, is, etc.)—are all Germanic.
Beyond distant and, for non-linguists, likely unrecognizable Indo-
European roots, the Swedish would appear to have almost nothing in
common with the French, and surprisingly little in common with the
English. In the case of the Swedish version, the similarities with the German
are obvious in the nouns and adjectives, especially the more abstract or non-
everyday ones (Schrift/skrift, überflüssig/överflödig, Verhältnis/förhållande,
unpassend/opassande), and not in many of the more common words,
especially not conjunctions, articles, prepositions, and everyday adverbs and
adjectives (nicht is inte; nur, bara; nach, enligt; wie, som; zu, till)—the
opposite of the situation with English. It’s as if translating Hegel to English
involves furnishing a basic Germanic structure common to English and
German with a Latinized Hegel, whereas translating Hegel to Swedish
involves building a new structure with uniquely Scandinavian materials,
and moving Hegel’s furniture, perhaps reupholstered in a few cases, directly
into it.
Translating Hegel into Swedish is of course a bit more complicated than
the above analogy suggests, as we will see shortly. But first, consider a list of
words that are very similar, or—once one is aware of a few sound and stem
equivalencies14—essentially identical in Swedish and German:

German Swedish
Bildung bildning
(Ausbildung utbildning)

begreifen begripa
Begriff begrepp

(We thus didn’t have to decide between concept and notion, and the original
sense of actually physically grasping something is retained in the Swedish.)

14
For example, German’s an- is å- in Swedish; auf- is upp-; aus-, ut-; ein-, in-; steh-, stå-;
deut-, tyd-; gr(ei/i)f-, gr(i/e)p-; and the German noun ending -ung is -(n)ing in Swedish,
and German infinitive verb ending -en is -a or occasionally -å in Swedish).

201
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

bestehen bestå
bestimmen bestämma

(And related words; and note that there is no difficulty figuring out how to
capture all the senses of destiny, determination, and so on in Swedish, since
they are as present in bestämning as much as they are in Bestimmung.)

erfahren erfara
Erfahrung erfarenhet
Einbildung inbillning
Erinnerung erinring
Satz sats
setzen sätta
sittlich sedlig
Sittlichkeit sedlighet
(And related words.)
Vorstellung föreställning
Wesen väsen
wirken verka
Wirklichkeit verklighet
Realität realitet

For most of these words, the richness of the German is captured perfectly by
the correlating Swedish word. Swedish’s väsen, for example, means “es-
sence,” but also “being” in the sense of a creature, just as Wesen does.
And Wirklichkeit and Realität were straightforward choices for us, since
Swedish has both verklighet and realitet, and verklighet has the same relation
to the verb verka that Wirklichkeit does to wirken.
Our choice for the notoriously difficult to translate aufheben was also
much easier than it would be for French- or English-speaking translators:
upphäva, though upphäva is not as utterly perfect a choice as it might seem
given the identity of the two words’ roots. The two contradictory senses
Hegel describes at the beginning of “Perception”—“a negating and at the
same time a preserving” (§113)—are both present in the Swedish, as well as
the meaning suggested by the roots: a “lifting up.” Upphäva and aufheben
are not entirely synonymous in all their senses, however. In upphäva, the

202
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

sense of “preserving” might be a bit weaker, and the original sense of the
word is still strongly present—lifting up in the sense of commencing
something, as in raising one’s voice to begin speaking. A German would
likely express this sense of a commencing with anheben, not aufheben. In
any event, these niceties are nothing compared with the difficulties faced by
someone translating aufheben into French or English. As Pinkard points
out in the glossary to his translation, “sublate,” when it was first chosen by
Hegel translators in the mid-nineteenth century, was a questionable choice,
but the term has become established, and can’t easily be changed now.
Instead of simply declaring by fiat that “sublate” captured everything Hegel
wanted to say with aufheben, which is what these early translators
essentially did (for the word most certainly did not mean aufheben when it
first started being used by translators), it might have been more useful, and
perhaps no more bizarre, simply to have declared that a more etymo-
logically related term, like “upheave,” would capture everything Hegel
wanted to say with aufheben. (And the standard noun form “upheaval”
might have helped people see Hegel’s revolutionary side.)
Swedish is also a relatively original language in Vico’s sense, which
makes the multiple meanings of Hegel’s words more present, more
concrete, to the reader. But while many of our translation choices might
have been relatively easy, the multiple, transparent meanings are at times
radically different from those present in the German. Koyré gives
gleichgültig, which normally means “indifferent,” as an example of a word
whose roots (gleich, equal, and gültig, valid) yield a different sense of the
word: “equivalent” (“equally valid”), which Hegel also intended to be
understood by the reader. Here, the Swedish likgiltig has the same multiple
meanings. But the situation is different with Gegenstand. While Swedish has
an equally “original” word, föremål, as a translation of Gegenstand, its roots
are quite different. Rather than something standing against one, föremål
suggests more a target, or goal, or objective (mål) that is before one, in front
of one (före). The Swedish word with similar roots to Gegenstand, motstånd
(mot=gegen; stånd=stand), means resistance, not object. An object for a
Swede is not something that resists, or stands against, but is rather a curious
little thing in front of one that one wants to inspect, one sort of zeros in on
it, picks it up and turns it around in one’s fingers, holds it before one.15 In a

15
Swedish also has the Latin import objekt, which corresponds to German’s Latin
import, Objekt. But Objekt scarcely appears in the Phenomenology.

203
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

few passages this might actually help one understand Hegel better than one
could in other languages, even German. For example, in the introduction, it
is perhaps more natural to understand the goal (Ziel, mål) of the
phenomenological journey as a correspondence of concept and object (§80)
when the word for object contains a sort of teleological, goal-like, aspect to
it (föremål). In Swedish, perhaps natural consciousness more easily over-
comes its separation from the object.
Dasein and Existenz, like Gegestand/Objekt and Wirklichkeit/Realität,
constitute another instance of a pair consisting of a “heroic” or original
word and a newer import that has a corresponding pair in Swedish: tillvaro
and existens. Dasein is of course a famously difficult word for Germans, let
alone for translators, with many German philosophers assigning it radically
different senses. For Hegel it often meant a determinate being, which is
suggested by the roots: being (Sein) there (da). Da in the sense of “there” is
“där” in Swedish, but the word därvaro—being (-varo) there (där)—means
“presence,” not “existence” (and därvaro is an extremely obscure word in
Swedish; the normal word for “presence” is närvaro). “Presence” can of
course also be heard in Dasein, and that sense was stronger in the word in
centuries past. Etymology is not meaning—even if, from the outside, one
might think it would be for heroic languages—and Dasein does indeed
relatively unproblematically mean tillvaro in most of its uses, just like
Gegenstand does indeed mean föremål, whatever the differences in the
etymologies. But here we might once again expect there to be a slightly
different valence to the translated word, even if Swedes and other speakers
of heroic languages of course don’t go around breaking down words into
their constituent parts to understand what they really mean. Till in Swedish,
like till in English, is etymologically related to the German Ziel, goal, yet it
isn’t precisely that tillvaro feels somehow more “teleological” than Dasein.
But in certain contexts it does partly refer to one’s immediate
surroundings—whether they are healthy, auspicious, nurturing, etc. (the
etymological connection might lie in their furthering the goal of my life, my
living)—a sense that is not as obvious in Dasein. This difference in sense is
one of the reasons why we occasionally translated Dasein as existens, not
tillvaro. Consider, for example, the following sentence in the first paragraph
of “Spirit” (§437): “Aber die Wahrheit des Beobachtens ist vielmehr das
Aufheben dieses unmittelbaren findenden Instinkts, dieses bewußtlosen
Daseins derselben.” [However, the truth of observation is even more the
sublation of this instinct for immediately finding things, the sublation of

204
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

this unconscious existence of the truth.] An “unconscious tillvaro” sounds

strange in Swedish, especially in the Swedish welfare state of today, where it
might sound like Hegel is talking about the Swedish state’s reflection on
truth’s “unconscious quality of life.” So we chose existens.
Most German words, of course, are quite different in Swedish, and one
realizes Swedish in many ways is more distant from German than English,
precisely as its placement in historically based language groups would
suggest. There’s nothing that looks like “Zweck” in Swedish. Ändamål
(literally: “end goal”) captures the weightier meaning of Zweck, but we
translated it with syfte when it meant a relatively temporary or provisional
goal, as opposed to purpose, or ultimate goal. There are also extraordinarily
many “false friends” (which were in almost all cases true friends many
centuries ago). Anstoß looks like it would be anstöt in Swedish—the roots
are identical—but anstöt means nothing other than offense (ta anstöt av:
take offense at), so we chose impuls (impulse) for Anstoß. Ding and ting are
not false friends, but Ding often had to be translated with sak (related to
Sache), because the meanings of Ding and ting don’t quite overlap. The
German verb werden and Swedish’s bliva (today usually used in the shorten
form, bli) were a straightforward translation match for us, although they
could be almost described, at least to the extent that becoming and
remaining are opposed, as “false enemies”: bliva has the same roots as
German’s bleiben (to remain), so one might think it means the same thing,
and not becoming, but it has come to be the normal way to say werden in
Swedish (an older Swedish word etymologically related to werden, varda, is
now largely obsolete). Werden ultimately comes from roots meaning turn
or twist, and bleiben comes from roots meaning to stick to something, as in
to a place, that is, to remain in a place. The bleiben sense of bli(va) still
remains, for example in the expression “låt bli honom” (let him be).
Becoming might feel like less of a turning to Swedes, and more of an
allowing something to become, if left alone, in the sense of allowing it to
unfold as it would on its own, which would of course be more appropriate
to a phenomenology of spirit. German’s dar- is related to the Swedish där-,
but darstellen is framställa in Swedish, not “därställa” (which doesn’t exist
in Swedish). On the particle “fram,” the Brothers Grimm, in a strangely
mournful tone, say: “For us [Germans], this ancient, venerable particle has
long since died out” (“diese uralte, ehrwürdige Partikel ist uns längst
ausgestorben”). Its sense is different from dar, “there.” It means rather
“forward,” in the sense of going from one point to a different one (English’s

205
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

“from” has the same roots). So the teleological sense of the presentation of
the dialectic might be more present in Swedish (to say nothing of its ancient
venerability).
In Hegel, ande is the relatively unproblematic translation of Geist into
Swedish, although Geist has many more shades of meaning than ande.
(Some of these other shades of meaning – the German equivalents of “team
spirit” or a “spirit of cooperation” – are captured by a different, though
obviously related word in Swedish, anda. Indeed, one could argue that Geist
in the Phenomenology does occasionally appear in a sense that’s perhaps
more like anda than ande, such as the “spirit of a culture,” which is a
borderline case between ande and anda. But the continuity with Geist qua
ande required consistency in our translation choice.) Geist and ande, as well
as spirit (and esprit), all ultimately derive from words denoting the
movement of air in one way or another. But the earliest forms of Geist (like
the Swedish gast, and the English ghost) meant primarily air moving in the
sense of wind, often a wind whipped into a fury, whereas ande, like spirit,
comes from words meaning the movement of air in the sense of breath or
breathing (one of the meanings of anda is literally “breath”). Whether this
means that readers of translations of Hegel—and the Swedish, English,
French, Spanish, and many other translations translate Geist with a
breathier word—sense something gentler in spirit, or in world spirit, than
Hegel or his German readers did, is hard to know. (Hegel made Napoleon
himself less “furious” or “gho/a/stly” in a letter to Niethammer, when he
wrote that he had seen “Weltseele zu Pferde,” not “Weltgeist,” though
Kojève contends this was simply because Napoleon wasn’t fully self-
conscious, and thus couldn’t be Geist.)
There are of course numerous challenges that result from figures of
speech being different in different languages. Most of these are of little
significance. But that, for example, common sense is “der gesunde
Menschenverstand” in German posed a slight problem for us, since it’s
“healthy reason (förnuft/Vernunft)” in Swedish, which strips the term of a
sense Hegel probably intended, certainly at the end of the perception
chapter. We chose the normal Swedish expression in the preface, but used
“vanligt sunt förstånd” (“normal healthy understanding”), with scare-quotes
(because it sounds quite odd in Swedish), at the end of Perception, where
Hegel clearly is adumbrating the transition to the understanding chapter.
There are a few curious things about Swedish (and other Nordic
languages) that pose unique, if, for the most part, relatively minor trans-

206
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

lation challenges. All verb endings for a given tense are the same in Swedish,
regardless of person and number, even for strong or irregular verbs (as it
might look from the outside: “I am,” “he am,” “they am,” etc.). When Hegel
writes, in §102, “Ich ist nur allgemeines [...]” (directly translated into
English: “I is only universal [...]”) the Swedish translation, “Jag är bara något
allmänt [...]” could be read as either “(the) I is only universal” or “I am only
universal,” the latter being of course, in other contexts, the much more
normal way to read those German words, though here it is not the correct
way to read them. It becomes clear in the context of the passage what is
meant, but the Swedish doesn’t work quite as well as the German.
Swedish has an extremely inflexible word order, one that differs
substantially from that of other non-Nordic languages. Although this
certainly bears on the difficulty of doing the translation, it generally has no
bearing on the quality of the resulting translation into Swedish, with a
couple of strange exceptions. Adverb placement is altered in dependent
clauses, so that, for example, “I can not go” must become, in a dependent
clause, “(he said that) I not can go.” In a few cases this leads to potential
ambiguity in the Swedish. For example, in §200: “[...] damit durchaus, in
demjenigen, was für das Bewußtsein ist, kein anderes Ingredienz wäre als
der Begriff, der das Wesen ist” becomes in Pinkard’s translation (he starts a
new sentence): “There would thereby be for all intents and purposes no
other ingredient in what is for consciousness than the concept which is the
essence.” Unless we want to rewrite the sentence entirely—which can cause
other potential misunderstandings—we can only place the “durchaus” (“for
all intents and purposes”) directly after “for consciousness,” which could
make it seem that it’s modifying consciousness, not the verb “be.”
Such problems are of course relatively minor. A bit less minor, and often
much more frustrating, is the difficulty in Swedish of using a word such as
“of” (or an article in the genitive, like eines or des in German) to mark the
genitive. The genitive is the description of a particular kind of relation of
one noun to another. The most common relations are relations of
possession, partitive relations (“cup of coffee”), and relations of origin
(“people of Europe”). English can choose between “of” or the possessive s,
depending on the kind of relationship, French doesn’t use s to mark the
genitive, and Swedish has nearly the opposite limitation of French: it is
generally necessary to use the possessive s, and not the word for “of” (av),
except in certain expressions like “type of” (typ av); in partitive use it uses
no marker of any kind (as in many other languages): “a cup of coffee” is

207
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

expressed as “a cup coffee”). The genitive s is used in ways that seem very
strange to non-Nordic ears: for example, one must express “The City of
Stockholm” as “Stockholm’s City” (though Swedish generally doesn’t use
the apostrophe, so in Swedish it’s Stockholms stad). The title of our
translation sounds, to foreign ears, like “Spirit’s Phenomenology” (Andens
fenomenologi)16. Different languages have different ways of saying the same
thing, so there’s nothing inherently limiting about this aspect of Swedish,
except that Swedes generally avoid using the possessive s on long noun
phrases, and, more importantly, the German genitive case covers many
different types of noun-noun relationship, and figuring out how to render
certain instances of German’s genitive articles into Swedish can sometimes
be quite difficult. Consider the title of the fourth chapter: “Die Wahrheit der
Gewißheit seiner selbst.” There are two genitives. Pinkard chose a noun
compound, “self-certainty,” for the second genitive, perhaps to avoid the
clumsiness of two “ofs.” For the first genitive he chose of. Lefebvre chose
two “ofs” (as one is nearly forced to in French): “Le vérité de la certitude de
soi-même.” Noun compounds like “self-certainty” work fine in Swedish, but
it wouldn’t have been idiomatic here, so we chose “certainty
about/concerning itself” (vissheten om sig själv) for the second genitive. But
the first genitive is an example of where translating into Swedish is much
harder than translating into English. “Of” has a breadth of meaning that
more or less covers the breadth of the genitive “der,” and can be chosen as a
correct translation without having to worry about exactly what sort of
noun-noun relationship exists between Wahrheit and Gewißhet. The
Swedish “of,” av, would be wrong here, as indicated, and the genitive s,
while much broader in its use in Swedish than in English, isn’t quite right
either, partly because the relationship isn’t one of possession or origin, even
broadly understood, but mostly because Swedish frowns on the use of the
genitive s at the end of long noun phrases—it would sound almost as bad as
the corresponding construction in English: “certainty concerning itself’s
truth.” We thus had to choose a preposition other than av. We chose hos,
which means “at” in the sense of “chez,” ultimately coming from the
Swedish word for house, in the same way that French’s chez comes from
Latin’s casa. So the feeling of our translation of the chapter title is partly
“the truth chez self-certainty.” There is of course something fundamentally

16
Translated word for word, it’s actually “The Spirit’s Phenomenology”—the n in Anden
is “the.” But explaining that will take us into even more obscure territory.

208
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

right about the “chez” aspect of our choice here, and it might even aid the
reader in seeing that the question is how much truth there is “in” self-
certainty, not whether self-certainty is true or false (which might be
suggested by the English). But one criterion of a good translation is that it
point back to the original in an unambiguous way, and our translation
points to some degree in two directions: “Die Wahrheit der Gewißheit
seiner selbst” and “Die Wahrheit bei Gewißheit seiner selbst.”
Let us leave these obscure aspects of translating Hegel and return briefly
to Adorno. As we noted, Adorno says the substance of Hegel’s philosophy is
process, and that it presents itself as the “negation of something congealed.”
Normal language use can only be stretched a small amount before it ceases
being challenging and interesting and becomes nonsensical. One way to
write with an anti-congealing effect in English that wouldn’t necessarily
seem like a bizarre experiment with language is to use more gerunds where
one would normally use a “congealed” noun: “the thinking” instead of “the
thought,” “the transitioning” instead of “the transition,” and so on. The
equivalent in German is the nominalized infinitive.17 Anyone reading the
Phenomenology in German will be struck by how often Hegel uses
nominalized infinitives. Of course, German is much more permissive with
nominalized infinitives than English or Swedish, to the point where they are
almost synonymous with their congealed forms. For example, in talking
about the relation between the soliciting and solicited force in “Force and
the Understanding,” Hegel switches to “Übergang” at §139 then back to his
normal non-congealed “Übergehen” at §140. To insist on a consistent
translation into English of Übergang with transition and Übergehen with
transitioning would be to insist on a distinction Hegel himself might not
have been making. There is of course the additional problem that “the
transitioning” sounds much stranger in English than “das Übergehen” does
in German. In the case of Übergehen and Übergang, the translation
challenge in Swedish is similar to that in English: the nominalized verb form
in Swedish that corresponds to English’s “-ing”18 (övergåendet) sounds too
strange in Swedish for us to have used it consistently, though it’s not quite

17
The German nominalized infinitive can of course also be translated into English as a
nominalized infinitive in some cases, which wouldn’t sound as “anti-congealing” as the
nominalized gerund—“to think” instead of “thinking.” But in the Phenomenology, the
vast majority of nominalized infinitives are best understood as the equivalent of gerunds
in English.
18
Technically, this is not a gerund in Swedish, but its function is more or less the same.

209
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

as strange as “the transitioning” is in English. We did choose övergåendet a

few times, however, where it seemed that övergång (“transition”) really
would have been congealed in a way Hegel would not have endorsed.
There are numerous other uses of nominalized verbs in the Phenom-
enology, but one that was slightly unusual two hundred years ago, and
posed a tremendous translation challenge for us, was “das Erkennen.”
Today this non-congealed form has taken on a congealed meaning, much
like “writing” is a normal noun that doesn’t necessarily refer to a person’s
actual activity of writing. But two hundred years ago it was not in common
use, certainly not among philosophers. Fichte and Schelling almost never
used “Erkennen” in this way in their published writings.19
In most of the contexts in which Hegel uses it, “das Erkennen” means
literally “the knowing,” or “the process of knowing or coming know,” “the
process of acquiring knowledge” about something, etc. (though there are
other senses to the word, like “discern,” and in everyday use today it has
many other meanings, including “realization” or “recognition”). “Das
Erkennen” was unusual, but not a bizarre usage in Hegel’s time. In English,
“the knowing” (or “coming to know,” “coming into awareness of,” etc.)
would produce more of a Verfremdungseffekt than Hegel would have
intended, this is why cognition in English makes sense as a translation here.
Unfortunately, kognition in Swedish does not work as well as cognition in
English: the use of kognition in Swedish is too restricted to the cognitive
sciences to feel right for the Phenomenology. Swedish’s version of “the
knowing,” on the other hand, presents other problems. German has two
verbs that mean to know: erkennen and wissen. Swedish has only one
normal verb to mean “know” in the sense of wissen: veta, which is the
obvious (etymologically and otherwise) choice for wissen. It could also
function, if imperfectly, as a translation of erkennen, but we could not of
course use it for both wissen and erkennen. There is an older verb,
kunskapa, that means, or used to mean, to know in the sense of erkennen—
to acquire knowledge about something (in the sense of bringing something
into one’s “ken”). Today the word is used, if it’s used at all, to mean to

19
Fichte uses it only once, in Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, and, there, it
is used only as a contrast to what is known (das Erkannte): “Zuvörderst einige Worte
über die Methode!—Im theoretischen Theile der Wissenschaftslehre ist es uns lediglich
um das Erkennen zu thun, hier um das Erkannte.” J. G. Fichte, Gesamtausgabe der
Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften / 1. Reihe: Werke: Werke 1793–1795, vol. I, 2
(Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1965), 416.

210
 HEGEL IN SWEDISH

“spy,” to gather intelligence, etc. We considered reviving its more philo-

sophical use, but it would have been an uphill battle. The dictionary of the
Swedish Academy (Svenska Akademiens ordbok) gives an example of its use
to mean “to know” from 1808, and another example from 1936, but the text
from 1936 puts “kunskapade” (a past participle form) in scare-quotes, since
by then the word’s use as “to know” had already become obsolete, or nearly
so. Hegel doesn’t need to be made more mysterious than he already is, so we
chose the unfortunate though necessary compromise of “kunskap” (which,
alas, is also the translation of Erkenntnis) in many cases, and in some cases,
where the aspect of knowing, or gaining knowledge seemed particularly
essential, something more like “acquiring/to acquire knowledge of” (att få
kunskap om).
While “das Erkennen” posed a great challenge for us, “das Wissen” is, as
indicated, straightforward for Swedish translators. The verb wissen is veta in
Swedish, and the nominalized verb, which is completely normal in German
(and was in Hegel’s time), means the same thing as the nominalized verb in
Swedish (vetande), which is also completely normal in Swedish. In English,
the choice is not quite so straightforward. All the translators, from Baille to
Pinkard, choose “absolute knowledge” for “absolutes Wissen.” But there are
other possibilities, above all the less congealed “absolute knowing.” It’s
interesting that many native German speakers, when speaking or writing
about Hegel in English, use “absolute knowing” for “absolutes Wissen.”
This, of course, may mean little more than that there are risks to writing in
foreign languages. But it may mean that these native German speakers sense
a progressive or processual aspect to absolutes Wissen they feel (perhaps
incorrectly) isn’t captured by the word knowledge. Yet Wissen is an entirely
normal noun in German, and translating it with anything other than
“knowledge” would make Hegel’s text more alienating than it already is.
The only downside might be that Hegel is pushed, ever so slightly, towards
Kojève, where the goal of the Phenomenology is seen as bringing the reader
to a state of total knowledge, of making one “wise” in Kojève’s sense, instead
of simply bringing consciousness to a way of knowing, as a preparation for
Hegel’s actual system. On the other hand, if one of the possible etymologies
of knowledge is correct, its roots mean, essentially, to create or produce

211
 BRIAN MANNING DELANEY

knowing,20 making it, in a sense, even less congealed than the word knowing
itself would be.

***

Translations are generally called “interpretations” when they are

translations of poetry, but all translations are interpretations. The
limitations pointed to by Koyré are in fact a rich resource, one that makes
translations of Hegel into languages with different linguistic histories new
texts, new Hegels—as in the Swedish Hegel, where the subject might more
readily see itself in the object, where becoming might be letting be, where
Geist itself might seem less ferocious, lending Hegel an almost Nietzschean
Heiterkeit.
The reason to translate Hegel, and to keep translating him every decade
or two, even into the same language, is thus not so much to introduce Hegel
to the “Reader of Strindberg” (or Shakespeare or Cervantes or Proust), or to
introduce Hegel to undergraduates (though this latter goal is important).
The reason to translate Hegel is perhaps more fundamentally a matter of
continuing to produce new interpretations, from new perspectives—
something a modern Skoteinos surely would have endorsed.

20
-Ledge, from -leche, is a suffix meaning to become, or produce, what is specified by the
first element of the word.

212
 French Losses in Translating Hegel
A Heuristic Benefit?
JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE

Philosophy invents its concepts in opposition to its time and always

comes to shake up language.
Gilles Deleuze

1.

The translation of German philosophical works into French always

encounters all the problems attending the passage from a Germanic to a
Romance language, and furthermore, it does so under the conditions of the
particular expectations of the reader of philosophy, and of the implicit
interpretative contract set up between him and the translator.
The French reader of philosophy does not generally have access to the
German language, but of all readers of translations, he is undoubtedly the
one who will most often try to compare the translation he is reading with
the original (which, for instance, very few readers of novels will do). This is
why we find German-language editions of the great philosophical classics in
the Parisian philosophical bookstores.
The philosophical reader is vigilant with regard to the letter, a vigilance
rooted in an old, conflicted history, the history of conflicts over translations,
stemming from the great theological conflicts, above all in the Christian
world. And furthermore, he has a potentially critical relation to the
translator, who is accused of not providing sufficient help to the reader to
understand, a critical relation sometimes identified with the procedure of
philosophy itself—in brief, a heuristic disbelief. Thus, there is a tradition of
bilingual editions of the great texts of Descartes, Spinoza, Cicero, and
sometimes Kant and Hegel.

213
 JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE

This has consequences for the translator: he is not necessarily

intimidated by this vigilance on the part of the reader, which can even
function as positive stimulus, but he has interiorized this conflict, and has
often received his philosophical culture in this (polemical) universe: he has
been this critical reader of translations, and it is to this critical relation that
he owes becoming a translator.
In France, the translation of German philosophical texts is a fairly recent
phenomenon, and more or less coincides with more than a century of
antagonistic relations with Germany, including three brutal wars. To be
sure, it was in at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with Kant (when
it was France who entered Germany with Napoleon), that translation of
German philosophical texts had its true beginning. Yet, it must be said that
it was also around that time, at the end of the eighteenth century, German-
language philosophy itself began. Hegel was first translated in the mid 19th
century, beginning with the Lectures on Aesthetics, and, a bit later, extracts
from the Encyclopedia. Systematic and philological translation dates from
the mid twentieth century.
These translations are also from the very start over-determined by less
directly visible political issues, in which the great ideological forces of the
State and the Church have played a discreet and yet decisive role. The mere
look of a translation can pull Hegel either towards the religious side, or the
revolutionary atheist side.
In the twentieth century translations occasion contradictory debates,
partly due to translation errors that have been uncovered by scholarly work
on the texts. From these errors, one then passes over to specific difficulties
(inevitable losses, and makeshift solutions).
This historical dimension finally produces strategies, sometimes of an
agonistic character, for imposing general principles, as well as series of
standard solutions, above all onomastic ones, that unfortunately are not
regulated by international standardization committees, and above all do not
pose the question of the nature of philosophical language.
The stakes are seen as universal, the solutions often hand-crafted.
Intellectuals in France are well aware of the problems posed by the
translation of Freud, and it has been the topic of articles in the press with
titles such as “When will they finally translate Freud?” as if there were a
pathology to be cured there, as well. In January 2010 the copyrights to the
works of Freud will have expired, and the flood of translations that are
bound to appear will undoubtedly change this state of affairs. But for the

214
 FRENCH LOSSES IN TRANSLATING HEGEL

moment some of these works are translated on the basis of a strategy that
can be understood as an interesting symptom of the combination of con-
straint and anxiety that has a hold on the translator of theoretical texts. And
this symptom also has its bearings on the translation of Hegel (whose strong
presence in Freud is pointed out by many authors, beginning with Lacan)
This strategy—which, it is true, is partly due to the practice of collective
translation—first of all consists in always translating a German word with
one French word, a principle which I a priori consider to run against the
economic essence of language, and whose effects are further aggravated in
the case of the transition from German to French.
Cases of this would include the following:

Phantasie is for instance always translated by fantaisie.

Hilflosigkeit by the neologism désaide.
Seelisch by d’âme.
Seele by âme.

Traum, in compounds (for instance Traumarbeit), is translated by de rêve,

although French spontaneously turns to the adjective onirique for
compound concepts—even Traumdeutung has sometimes been translated
by oniromancie….
I invoke the case of Freud not because I don’t know what conference I’m
attending, nor because I happen to be focusing on the translation of Freud
at the moment, but because it opens a window onto the practical objective
of the reading of translation and the practical resources of systematizing
when one wants to convey a coherent body of thought, especially because
some of the current translations of Hegel into French appeal to the
systematic character of Hegel’s philosophy in order to proceed in the same
way that he does.
In the background of all these prefatory remarks, there is an anxiety that
something might get lost in translation. I myself have experienced this from
the point of view of the author: a novel that I wrote in French was translated
and published in Germany.
This fear certainly presupposes that the reader of the German text never
loses a thing when he reads the text in his own language, something which
is by no means certain. Today we will postulate this.

215
 JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE

Technically, this fear is based on the fact that many translators of

philosophy in France have a non-linguistic understanding of German,
principally based on philosophical texts, and are often unable to speak in
German on other subjects. They read German like they read Latin or Greek.
They sometimes look upon it as a sacred icon, a sibylline prime matter.
Conversely, many French Germanists, dread the difficulty and abstraction
of philosophical texts. Here, there is a cultural syndrome that weighs heavily
on the work of the translator. I just wanted to mention this issue before
moving on to the actual topic of our conference. The philosophical
translation is a kind of writing that takes place under a double constraint.

2.

I now, without further ado, turn to the subject of our conference, by

commencing with the notion of the object. I take this up in order to
illustrate what I mean by “French losses.”
German uses, as you know, the Germanic term Gegenstand for this
notion and the Latin term Objekt, as well as their adjectival derivatives:
gegenständlich, objektiv. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Gegenstand has a
very important topical status. Der Gegenstand is what stands in front of
consciousness, or if you will, in front of the subject Bewusstsein. There is no
symmetric rhyme with Gegenstand (as with the occasionally synonymous
pair, subject-object), if not another Gegenstand.
What is lost in the French translation will then be this absence of
symmetry, since the French reader faced with OBJET will always think of
SUJET in petto. As a result of this interior rhyme, consciousness is not the
natural counterpart of object. Thus, to translate gegenständlich with
“objectif” constitutes another loss, since in current usage this French
adjective connotes the method of a subject that is not “subjective” but rather
sachlich, neutral, impersonal. One speaks of an objective vision of things,
sometimes even of an objective judge. Obviously, we can hope that the
philosophical reader, endowed with a sharpness of reason, will permanently
make the correction, but this means imputing to him a power of near
superhuman attentiveness.
What is lost is the permanent reference to the intended topic via the
other distinguishing marks: für sich seyn, seyn für anderes. Unlike the
French pour, für always elicits vor, and is located in the region of gegen. The

216
 FRENCH LOSSES IN TRANSLATING HEGEL

solution I have adopted is one that I would like to call a modest neologism,
which liberates the term from its primary parasitical relation—or, as we say
in French, parasitage—and signals the singularity of the corresponding
concept in German. I have spontaneously translated gegenständlich as
“objectal,” and subsequently discovered that the translators of Husserl had
made recourse to the same neologism.
This sole example compels me to return once again to the concept of
parasitage, a phenomenon that a word, in its own language, exhibits in
relation to its semantic and thus cultural periphery. What is lost in
translation is therefore:
Firstly, the semantic periphery of the German concept: for example,
Selbstbewußtsein and selbstbewusst both mean, in German, self-conscious-
ness and the fact of being conscious of oneself, but also a certain
psychological and even existential modality: a self-confidence that can go as
far as arrogance, a self-assurance about one’s own knowledge. The concept
also contains the conjugated root of the verb wissen (wusst). Finally, it is
subsumed under the category of a being (Hegel thus writes it with a “y”!
Seyn). This entire complex periphery works on the meaning, labors patient-
ly on the memory of the reader. The assemblage is never arbitrary.
Secondly, the very presence of a periphery, if one makes use of it, as one
translator does, produces a complex neologism such as “autoconscience.”
The French concept is then “outside-of-language,” like certain religious
categories. The same thing could be noted in the case of the concept of
Aufhebung, the trivial character of which, in German, is abolished by the
use of neologisms, or puns (as in the case of Derrida’s translation, relève)
This first loss is seen and commented upon often, nonetheless, the loss is
significant because it is permanent. Its permanence means that its strength
is more significant than the vigilance of even the reader who is most aware
of the difficulty. In Hegel, it concerns a majority of the concepts to which I
have dedicated an appendix at the end of my translation.
Let us take some key concepts: meynen in German designates a very
intimate, almost sentimental, relation to the object, which in the first
chapter echoes sinnlich, and which can almost mean “love.” All of this is lost
in the French equivalents, although it would have helped the reader to
understand this type of relationship of a consciousness to an object.
Wahrnehmung is traditionally translated into French as “perception.”
What is lost is the relationship to the “truth,” to which the text alludes, but
also the disengagement from the sensible, for the French perception—and

217
 JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE

the verb percevoir—still has a strong connotation of simple sensation. The

same problem no doubt exists in English, where philosophical language
very often is of Latin origin and close to French.
Verstand is a category that Hegel treats with a critical distance. Verstand
is nothing but Verstand, in the same way that der Gedanke is only the
product of the understanding, which is not yet reason, die Vernunft. It is
still very close to Vorstellung and even to Anschauung. Hegel plays on its
presence in the expression “der gesunde Menschenverstand” which almost
has characterological significance.
The French language, which necessarily reserves “raison” for die
Vernunft, thus regularly has recourse to the word, entendement—as do I.
Unfortunately, this noun is completely alone in the paradigm: there is no
accompanying verb verstehen (comprendre), which, by the way, does not
appeal to Hegel very much, nor adjectives such as verständlich, verstandes-
mäßig. For these latter adjectives one might tempted to translate as
“rational” (particularly given the tradition of the critique of rationalism).
Unfortunately, one must retain “rationnel” for vernünftig because the French
“raisonnable” does not have the same rational content and means rather an
ethico-psychological quality connected to the concept of moderation.
The play with the semantic periphery is by definition, so to speak, lost
when philosophy itself engages in wordplay, for example mein, as a
possessive, and meynen, as a verb; or seyn, as a verb, and sein, as a
possessive. But Hegel doesn’t play too much with these homophones, and
here, the translator’s notes are sufficient.
Behind these notions of periphery and play there is the fundamental fact
of the economic character of language, which means that a term is also
specified by its context. A dominant sense is here defined, yet accompanied
by other possible, but less probable senses. Unfortunately, the French
language cannot preserve the same term, it must choose: thus, the adjective
“allgemein” sometimes inclines towards that which we call “universal” (as
opposed to particular) and sometimes towards gemein, a notion of com-
munity which is less radical, and for which we would rather say “général,”
and not solely in the case of Rousseau’s “volonté générale.” And yet this
very word général, in French, plays host to the parasite genre (which is used
as a translation of die Gattung).
With Sein and Wesen, the “Spanish” solutions ser and estar would be
useless, and this situation is pretty desperate. Very often, the translator is
tempted to translate das Wesen by the noun “être” in French, and not only

218
 FRENCH LOSSES IN TRANSLATING HEGEL

in the case of das höchste Wesen, l’Être suprême of the French Revolution.
Similarly, Wesenheit is not always l’essentialité, but can designate that which
we call an instance. This is to say nothing of Dasein, and that which
happens with that word in Heidegger. What is permanently lost in this pair
is the highly idiosyncratic characteristic of das Sein in German, which is
always understood as an infinitive verb form used as a noun for speculative
purposes, while un être in French is a sponge-noun, welcoming all the
parasites of the earth….
This is only one category of loss, but it is the most abundant and visible.
It concerns concepts as important and common as Anschauung, bestehen,
erfahren/Erfahrung, entfremden, Erscheinung/erscheinen, die Sache, die
Sittlichkeit, das Tun, der Zweck. For each of these terms there is a rich
profusion of French conceptual resources, and the solution that makes use
of one single term creates a purely formal continuity, but one that is, with
regard to its content, false.
Finally, it affects the homogeneity of the grand semantic networks that
support the German text thanks to the visibility of the roots of the words,
for instance wissen, present in Gewissheit, bewusst, Bewusstsein, Selbst-
bewußtsein, Gewissen, Wissenschaft.

3.

Another category of loss (and of difficulty for the translator) is of a

syntagmatic nature, particularly noticeable in Hegel, whose syntax is very
linear; allow me to explain.
There are three German genders (der, die, das) and several cases
(nominative, accusative, dative, genitive). In French there are only two
genders (male, female), and there are no cases. Via pronouns, the German
language can therefore refer, in a very precise and discriminating way, to
nouns used earlier, sometimes even at the very beginning of the paragraph,
without having to repeat them. When pronouns are translated system-
atically into pronouns in French, the text becomes horribly imprecise, and
Hegelian philosophy resembles the typical caricature that has been made of
it. The French translator must therefore—via rational interpretation—make
an effort to attribute these pronouns to the previously named concepts, and
then express these attributions through precise references. This exercise is

219
 JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE

at times difficult (which explains why even certain German readers use
foreign translations in order to understand obscure passages).
This procedure inevitably makes the text expand, and makes it heavier:
that which was intended to facilitate the reading becomes a source of
difficulty. What is lost is the benefit of density, which makes possible the
occurrence of the concepts in proximity to one another. And of course,
what is lost is a certain quality of the poetic genius of the pair language-
thought, a poetic genius that is connected to this density.
In addition, the plasticity of German syntax is lost, a syntax which can
progress from a nominative to an accusative, and then begin again from this
accusative at the beginning of the phrase and return to a nominative, and
then begin once again from that nominative, and so on. In French, the
tendency to restore the standard subject-verb-complement order in the
phrases destroys this linearity and disperses the elements even more. Very
often we must go back to the beginning in order once again to find the thread.
The baggage is heavy enough as it is. Reading becomes slow, wearing.

4.

On the other hand, there is perhaps less difficulty translating the

astonishing conceptual constructions used to parody Hegelian discourse:
being-for-self, being-in-itself, being-in-and-for-itself, etc. with their verbal
forms fürsichseiend, ansichseiend, anundfürsichseiend. The morphological
singularity of these notions authorizes the translator to use a parallel strategy
in his own language. He might even be tempted to leave these shibboleths of
Hegelianism in the original, in order to add a little local color.
But, in this case, other problems would arise. I raised the matter of the
topographical echoes of für sich previously. There is an even more radical
difficulty with an sich and an sich sein. The conventional translation is en soi
and être en soi. Unfortunately, en soi calls to mind a topography of interiority
which is not at all that of an sich, where “an” signifies a completely different
type of proximity by contact and tangency, one we find for example in
Anschauung. En soi would then correspond more to in sich, which we, by the
way, also see in Hegel’s text. But the tradition of the speculative use of “en soi”
in French, somehow saves this translation. However, in other cases, an should
be translated as “a même” and never as “en.”

220
 FRENCH LOSSES IN TRANSLATING HEGEL

5.

This chapter of new difficulties that we have opened here, is that of small
syntagmatic tools such as Ich, selbst, gleich, nur, erst, which appear very
frequently, and some of which have a conceptual form (e.g. das Selbst, die
Gleichheit). One of the linguistic effects of the German Bildung of French
philosophy has been to make possible what was previously forbidden. Not
only can we substantivize the infinitives: le rêver (the dreaming), le penser
(the thinking), etc., which have come to be added to everyday substan-
tivations such as “le boire et le manger des auberges”—“(the) drinking and
eating at a country inn,” but it is also possible today to write le Je (das Ich)
instead of le Moi, as was done in the earlier tradition. It is easy to see what is
at stake philosophically in this difference. Not only for Ich and mich, but
also for Sich and Selbst, which must be differentiated even though the
French philosophical tradition translates both with Soi, and relies on the
context to make the distinction clear. Myself, I have maintained this
differentiating signal by translating das Selbst as “Soi-même.”
On the other hand, I have differentiated the translations of gleich and
Gleichheit depending on the context, reserving the paradigm of equality for
contexts that are quasi-juridical or political, while often respecting the
abstract sense of identity that is often that of Gleichheit.
What gets lost here is precisely the initial indeterminateness, which is a
result of the frequent appearance of the word in Hegel’s phraseology, and all
associative or speculative play thereby permitted. Or, if you will, the support
that philosophy draws from language, the “speculative move of language.”
The result of these disjointed remarks would then be rather pessimistic,
if one didn’t count on the exceptional contextualizing power of the
Hegelian procedure and the integration that always begins afresh in each
development or each phenomenological pronouncement of the totality of
the experience of consciousness. Even a faulty translation functions in a
positive way. The reader advances, he is pushed away and pulled back. He
progressively recognizes a entire realms of his culture, his history, his world.
Here, I am speaking only of the Phenomenology. The book contains highly
poetic and eloquent moments; the abstraction is made vivid by this cadence,
and, in my view, it is this that authorizes the impertinence of the translator
and all the accumulated loss. Many things are always in the process of
dying, but rebirth is always possible.

221
 JEAN-PIERRE LEFEBVRE

In this way, the philosophy of Hegel has, as Deleuze says, “shaken up”
the French language via the German language. There is a way of a philo-
sophizing in French that has inherited, among other things, this disruption,
and resounds in the language and thought of the anthropological school, be
it Lévi-Strauss (who himself recognizes this), Michel Foucault, or the
Hellenist Jean-Pierre Vernant. It was they whom I had in mind in the last
paragraph of my introduction to my translation, which I will read to you
here in English, thanks to my fellow translators:

What is important is not to accumulate more or less successful tricks,

which are fully justifiable, even necessary, in an explanatory comment,
but to respect the linguistic ethos at work in Hegel’s way of proceeding.
The Phenomenology is, in fact, a great book of translation, an immense,
supple glossary appropriate to the mission of communication. It is not
merely this original and pure treasure that others would attempt to
transport to their own language, but it is itself a dialectical anthology of
the treasures possessed by these others, the placing into a regional idiom
of universal philosophy and the discourse of History. In this sense, we
can once again compare Hegel and Luther. This is the “common sense”
of his singularity, the essence of his difficulty: just as he does not
explicitly cite those of which he speaks, but himself speaks in them and
in their texts, Hegel—in a way which undoubtedly is ultimately artificial,
and which in the end failed (despite the epigonic burst of Heidegger)
since in 1807 we were no longer in 1517, and since it was a question of
philosophy—expelled the “cosmopolitan” vocabulary of European
philosophy from his discourse, eliminated or assigned the terms of
Greek or Latin origins to the phases of the movement of thought that
had been overcome. The following year, Fichte, the great disciple of the
cosmopolitan Kant, in parodying the title of an address by Luther, “To
the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,” held before a swooning
audience his famous “Address to the German Nation,” where he
justified, among other things, this practice of thinking in one’s mother
tongue. But at the same time, he bade farewell to this practice. And thus
it is, in the awareness of the limits of this unprecedented experience that
we must admire the intensity and rigor in Hegel, and attempt to
translate him with the same orientation: the orientations that are at
home in the rivers and hills of our own idiom, whose very beauty
depends, just as the English landscapes painted by Turner or Monet, on
the intrusion of a historical artifact that comes to challenge its nature.

Translation by Brian Manning Delaney and Sven-Olov Wallenstein.

222
 Authors

ROBERT B. PIPPIN is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service

Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of
Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author
of several books and articles on German idealism and later German philo-
sophy, including Kant’s Theory of Form; Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions
of Self-Consciousness; Modernism as a Philosophical Problem; and Idealism
as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. Additional books include Henry James
and Modern Moral Life, Die Verwirklichung der Freiheit; The Persistence of
Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath; and Nietzsche, moraliste français: La
conception nietzschéenne d’une psychologie philosophique. His most recent
book, Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy, was
published February, 2012 by the University of Virginia Press.

WALTER JAESCHKE is Professor of Philosophy at the Ruhr-Universität in

Bochum, and the director of the Hegel archives. He is the general editor of
Hegel’s Gesammelte Werke, published by the Nordrhein-Westfälischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, as well as of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s
Werke (together with Klaus Hammacher), and Jacobi’s Briefwechsel. His
publications include Die Suche nach den eschatologischen Wurzeln der
Geschichtsphilosophie: Eine historische Kritik der Säkularisierungsthese; Die
Religionsphilosophie Hegels; Die Vernunft in der Religion: Studien zur
Grundlegung der Religionsphilosophie Hegels (Eng. trans. Reason in Religion),
and Hegel-Handbuch.

TERRY PINKARD is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His

field of research includes German philosophy from Kant to the present,
particularly the period covering the development from Kant to Hegel,
philosophy of law, political philosophy, and bioethics. Some of his recent

223
 TRANSLATING HEGEL

books include Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason; Hegel: A

Biography, and German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. In
2012 he published Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of
Life. He is currently completing a new translation of Hegel’s Phenom-
enology for Cambridge University Press.

SUSANNA LINDBERG earned her Ph.D. from Université Marc Bloch in

Strasbourg, 2000, with the thesis Heidegger avec Hegel: une explication
philosophique. She is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Helsinki, and a postdoctoral researcher of the Academy of Finland and the
University of Helsinki. Her current work deals with ideas of “life” and the
“elemental” in German idealism, contemporary phenomenology, and decon-
struction. She recently published Heidegger contre Hegel: Les irréconciliables.

CARL-GÖRAN HEIDEGREN is Professor of Sociology at Lund University.

His research areas include the history of ideas, sociology of philosophy, and
sociology of culture. His publications include: Hegels Fenomenologi: En
analys och kommentar [Hegel’s Phenomenology: Analysis and Commen-
tary]; Johan Jakob Borelius – den siste svenske hegelianen [J. J. Borelius: The
Last Swedish Hegelian]; Det moderna genombrottet i nordisk universitets-
filosofi [The Modern Breakthrough in Nordic University Philosophy],
Erkännande [Recognition], and Ernst och Friedrich Georg Jünger: två
bröder, ett århundrade [Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger: two brothers,
one century].

SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn

University in Stockholm, and is the editor-in-chief of Site. He is the
translator of works by Baumgarten, Winckelmann, Lessing, Kant, Hegel,
Frege, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Agamben,
and Adorno, as well as the co-translator of Hegel’s Phenomenology into
Swedish. He is also the author of numerous books on contemporary philo-
sophy, art, and architecture. Recent publications include Essays, Lectures;
Thinking Worlds: The Moscow Conference on Art, Philosophy and Politics
(co-ed. with Daniel Birnbaum and Joseph Backstein); The Silences of Mies;
Biopolitics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture; 1930/31: Swedish
Modernism at the Crossroads (with Helena Mattsson); Swedish Modernism:
Architecture, Consumption and the Welfare State (co-ed. with Helena
Mattsson), and Nihilism, Art, Technology.

224
 AUTHORS

S T A F F A N C A R L S H A M R E is Professor of Philosophy at Stockholm Uni-

versity. His research has focused on the foundations of the human sciences,
and questions of meaning and interpretation. He is the author of Language
and Time: An Attempt to Arrest the Thought of Jacques Derrida, as well as
the co-editor (with Anders Petterson) of Types of Interpretation in the
Human Sciences.

V I C T O R I A F A R E L D is associate senior lecturer in the history of ideas,

Stockholm University. She completed her Ph.D. in 2007 at University of
Gothenburg, and her dissertation, Att vara utom sig inom sig: Charles
Taylor, erkännandet och Hegels aktualitet [Being without oneself within
oneself: Charles Taylor, recognition, and Hegel’s actuality], deals with the
notion of recognition in political philosophy. She is currently Co-Director
of Studies at the Centre for European Studies at the University of
Gothenburg.

BRIAN MANNING DELANEY is completing a dissertation on the relation

between Hegel and Nietzsche. He has taught at Berkeley, has guest-lectured
at several Stockholm area universities and colleges, and sits on the editorial
board of Site. He has co-translated Hegel’s Phenomenology into Swedish,
and recently translated Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson’s As a Weasel
Sucks Eggs (Den andra födan).

J E A N - P I E R R E L E F E B V R E is the director of the German section the École

Normale Supérieure in Paris. He is the translator of works by Hölderlin,
Heine, Rilke, Brecht, and Celan, as well as of Marx’s Capital, Hegel’s
Phenomenology, and the three-volume edition of Hegel’s Lectures on
Aesthetics (together with Veronica Schenk). He is also the author of Hegel et
la société (together with Pierre Macherey), as well as of the novel La nuit de
passeur. He recently published a translation of Freud’s Traumdeutung into
French.

225
 Previously published titles

1. Hans Ruin & Nicholas Smith (eds.), Hermeneutik och

tradition: Gadamer och den grekiska filosofin (2003)

2. Hans Ruin, Kommentar till Heideggers Varat och

tiden (2005)

3. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback & Hans Ruin (eds.), The

Past’s Presence: Essays on the Historicity of Philosoph-
ical Thought (2006)

4. Jonna Bornemark (ed.), Det främmande i det egna: Filo-

sofiska essäer om bildning och person (2007)

5. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback (ed.), Att tänka

smärtan (2009)

6. Jonna Bornemark, Kunskapens gräns, gränsens

vetande: En fenomenologisk undersökning av transcen-
dens och kroppslighet (2009)

7. Carl Cederberg & Hans Ruin (eds.), En annan hu-

maniora, en annan tid/Another humanities, another
time (2009)

8. Jonna Bornemark & Hans Ruin (eds.), Phenomen-

ology and Religion: New Frontiers (2010)

9. Hans Ruin & Andrus Ers (eds.), Rethinking Time: Essays

on History, Memory, and Representation (2011)

10. Jonna Bornemark & Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback

(eds.), Phenomenology of Eros (2012)

11. Leif Dahlberg & Hans Ruin (eds.), Teknik, fenomenologi

och medialitet (2011)

12. Jonna Bornemark & Hans Ruin (eds.), Ambiguity of the

Sacred (2012)

Södertörns högskola
[email protected]
www.sh.se/publications

Translating Hegel The Phenomenology of Spirit
and Modern Philosophy

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit stands at the crossroads of modern philosophy.

Taking us from the lowest and simplest level of sense-certainty through ever
more complex forms of knowing and acting, Hegel’s monumental work even-
tually aspires to nothing less than a blueprint for absolute knowledge: a unity
of subject and object, finite and infinite, man and world, a notion that has
continually provoked new reactions and counterreactions throughout the
course of modernity.

Is Hegel’s work the consummation of classical metaphysics or the dawn of

something new? Is he a fundamentally Christian thinker or does he herald the
death of God? Should we read him as a precursor to modern phenomenology
and hermeneutics, sociology of knowledge, pragmatism, deconstruction? In
short: do we need to translate Hegel into some modern vocabulary to make him
relevant to the present? And if so, what would such a translation imply for our
reading of his texts?

Translating Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit and Modern Philosophy

contains the contributions from a symposium organized on the occasion
of the first Swedish translation of the Phenomenology. Bringing together a
group of eminent Hegel scholars who address questions of translation and
interpretation in the broadest sense, from historical hermeneutics to the actual
practice of textual translation, it reveals the continued presence of Hegel in
modern thought.

Brian Manning Delaney is a translator and philosopher.

Sven-Olov Wallenstein is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University.