Chapter 5 (part 2)
146. 5. It follows that in this system all the first principles of reasoning are violated and destroyed. If it were a question simply of destroying them, we would be dealing with the destruction and impossibility of knowledge. But, on the contrary, the principles of reasoning are invoked to set up a system which wants to violate and abolish them! In fact:
a) The principle of cognition states: 'Ens is the object of knowledge.' Fichte's system asserts: 'Knowledge produces ens'. This totally opposite principle supposes also that knowledge precedes existence.
147. b) The principle of contradiction affirms: 'There is no equality between affirmation and denial.' Fichte's system says: 'The ego, which is affirmation, and the non-ego, which is negation, form an equation.' But the contradictions in this system are more numerous than the words used to express it. Let me indicate one example. 'The ego posits the non-ego.' What is the non-ego? Everything that is not the ego: God and the world. But there are other egos in the world(183) which posit themselves and, because relative to the other ego, are non-ego. In other words, they are posited twice. Indeed, every ego is posited as many times as there are existing egos. Each ego posits itself and posits all the other egos contained in the non-ego.
With the words: 'positing the ego, positing the non-ego', we either wish to understand merely knowledge, and in this case the system dissolves and vanishes because it presupposes an object of knowledge prior to itself, or we want to bring it into existence and the egos are multiplied ad infinitum. Every ego positing all egos is multiplied ad infinitum because every ego, positing all the egos which exist, produces them. Hence the number of egos is squared. For the same reason, this number of egos, elevated to the second power, is then multiplied once more. Hence the increase of egos in this system should be expressed by an infinite series. Granted that the primal number of egos equals x, the series can be expressed in the following way: x, x2, x4, x8, x16 to infinity. The final term of this series would never be found, and the number of existing egos would be non-assignable. Indeed, not even a single ego could come into existence because the first ego implies the whole series. This shows mathematically the impossibility and absurdity in Fichte's system of any existence and knowledge whatsoever.
He will say, perhaps, that only his own ego exists, and that he wrote his philosophy for himself alone, rather like a spider making a web in the absence of flies. But if this is so, he is first condemned to posit a totally inanimate NON-EGO, a universe inhabited by himself alone where he lives eternally among brute beasts. Even here, however, he would have to explain to himself why his ego is unable to posit any other ego comprised in the non-ego. After all, he might, now and again, want to come out of his sterile solitude and enjoy the company of a fellow-human being! And what an impelling reason he would have for safeguarding himself so that the whole world would not perish with him! Secondly, there is no doubt that if his ego posits many other egos different from himself in the non-ego, this positing must not mean producing a real ens, but illusions. In this case, he himself would be an illusion because self-posited. On the other hand, if everything were illusion, there would be no illusion because illusion has meaning relative only to reality. At the same time, the egos he posits in the non-ego would be as true as he himself would be, positing himself in the same way!
148. c) The principle of substance is abolished because Fichte's system requires that reflective knowledge, an accident of the human intellect, be the same as being. Consequently, the distinction between subject and accident is eliminated. The accident, according to this system, exists of itself.
d) The principle of cause is also abolished because no cause can operate without sufficient reason. As we have seen, the ego in this system operates without any determining reason to explain its act.
149. e) The principle of activity relative to ens says: 'Every ens tends with its natural acts to preserve, increase and perfect itself.' Hence the opposite is true: 'No ens limits itself, divides itself, etc.' These passions of ens require a cause foreign to its natural activity. But Fichte's ego, the sole existing ens, limits and divides itself; it posits its own obstacle which it then endeavours to conquer and overcome. The ontological principle of activity of an ens is violated. All this is done without any assignable cause; our philosopher simply posits dogmatic opinions.
150. Granted that all logical and ontological principles of reason have been eliminated, no one has a right to reason; he must stay silent. No one has a right to think; he must vegetate. In fact, he can neither speak nor think without first re-establishing the very principles which he has disenabled and destroyed. Our philosopher, therefore, exaggerates, says more than he is entitled to, when he expresses his system in the following words which, indeed, annihilate it: 'There is nothing which exists either in me or outside me; there is simply continual variation. There is no other being; the only thing which exists are images of which I myself am one. Indeed, I am not even this, but only a confused image of images. Every reality is converted into a marvellous DREAM, and thought is THE DREAM OF THAT DREAM.' Fichte has no right to say even this without falling into a new contradiction.
151. The system of subjectivism whose development I have described first appeared in the East. Indian philosophers who professed it came to the same conclusion as Fichte. One sect of Buddhists admits only internal feeling and its eternal existence, the intelligent manas which is conscious of things. These Buddhists maintain that all the rest is empty; it is impossible to prove rationally that anything else exists. They admit only the ego from which, according to them, the NON-EGO comes forward as a mere illusion.
One Buddhist says:
Nothing really exists. Fo (that is, the wise men who have succeeded in reducing
all things to vain productions of the intellect) do not distinguish the worlds
from their own understanding. Everything in the worlds is the understanding
itself of Fo, that is, there is nothing else except Fo (the intellective
nature).(184)
We read in an Indian philosophical work:
All beings are contained in the purest substance of thought. Then an unexpected
idea arises and produces a false light. When the false light comes to birth,
what is empty (the ego distinct from the primal ego) and obscurity (the
non-ego) limit themselves reciprocally.(185)
The final conclusion is that all things are declared to be dreams of Fo, that is, of intelligence.
152. VII. SCHELLING. Schelling, like his predecessors, confuses ideas and, generally speaking, the objects of the spirit with the spirit. But since the objects of the spirit are infinite (the spirit is not limited from the point of view of its object), he busied himself in unifying these objects and reducing them to a single, infinite object which is confused with the spirit which knows it. The consequence is the system of absolute identity where the spirit remains identified with its infinite object which comprehends all determined objects. Schelling was struck by Fichte's affirmation: 'The ego and the non-ego form an equation.' The system of absolute identity can be said to consist solely in development and perfection of this proposition of his predecessor.
153. We need, however, to consider the thread of this whole reasoning to understand its inevitable incoherence. The reason why the knowing spirit is confused with the known objects is the prejudice of which I have already spoken: 'The spirit cannot know anything outside itself.' German philosophy was unable to free itself of this prejudice which, worse than any worm, had burrowed deep inside it.
Fichte, however, was not faithful to the erroneous principle which he had taken as the foundation of all his reasoning. Inadvertently he abandoned it because it was impossible to remain coherent with this primal error for any length of time. Fichte's incoherence arose because he first confused the spirit with the ego and then, because the ego is a self-conscious, selfpronouncing spirit, with consciousness. He posited the nature of the spirit in self-consciousness and arrived at the absurd, contradictory opinion: 'The ego posits itself.' But because the spirit, besides knowing itself, also knew many other things, Fichte added, by way of explanation: 'The ego posits the non-ego also.'
Granted, however, that the ego knows nothing outside itself, Fichte concluded: 'Between the ego and the non-ego there is an equation.' He thus reduced the latter to the former. This was, however, an absurd and clearly contradictory conclusion. The non-ego is the negation of the ego; the non-ego, therefore, whatever it is, will never be the ego. It will not even be a modification of the ego. The ego, which is conscious of itself, could never be unconscious of its own modification if the non-ego were such.
On the contrary, the ego is conscious that the non-ego is a negation of the ego, something which, by opposing the ego, limits it. The limitation arises in this way: it makes the ego know that it is not everything; that besides ITSELF, there is something which is not ITSELF. Whatever the non-ego may be, therefore, and whatever the source of its existence, it is certainly neither the ego nor a modification of the ego, and hence not equal to the ego. Because equating ego and non-ego is absurd, Fichte should have recognised the mistake in his principle: 'The ego can know nothing outside itself.' In fact, every principle resulting in absurdity is erroneous.
Nor can Fichte avoid the absurdity better by affirming that the non-ego is nothing more than an appearance, but truly the ego itself. First, this would have to be proved on the basis of some solid argument, and not simply asserted. Then, granted that the non-ego is an appearance, it still remains that it is neither the ego, nor an appearance that can be reduced to the ego. Third, if we distinguish appearance from substance, we have to ask whether the ego itself is appearance or substance. The ego is consciousness, and it is indeed consciousness which attests that the non-ego is not the ego.
The same testimony makes us know both the ego and the non-ego. If that which is attested by consciousness is an appearance, the ego itself is an appearance on a par with the non-ego. Indeed, this is what Fichte himself finally confesses. He had no alternative because the same ego is that which posits both itself and the non-ego. If, therefore, we are dealing with two appearances, there is no possibility of distinguishing substance from appearance in the non-ego. Consequently, there is no possibility of affirming that the non-ego relative to substance equates with the ego, and relative to appearance is different from the ego. They are either two appearances or two substances. In both cases, the non-ego is opposed to and never identifiable with the ego itself.
But surely the non-ego is conscious of itself? This is impossible: it is the opposite of the ego, and the ego is consciousness. Affirming the non-ego, therefore, is the same as affirming Non-consciousness. Hence Fichte's principle that the spirit is absolute, essential consciousness, that is, the ego is the same as the non-ego, falls to the ground. We have to conclude that there is something other than consciousness. The foundation of this system, however, consisted in reducing everything to consciousness. The foundation of the system is destroyed therefore in the very development of the system.
154. Schelling, without noticing in any way that introducing Non-consciousness destroyed the foundation of such philosophy, admitted the ego and the non-ego, that is, consciousness and non-consciousness. He claimed to find some movement which changed non-consciousness into consciousness, and consciousness into non-consciousness. To achieve this, he had to imagine (and it is a case of imagination) a third principle which could become either conscious or non-conscious. But this endeavour, as gratuitous as those we have already examined, entailed abandoning the initial reasoning with which Fichte established the ego and non-ego. Schelling embraced a system by beginning with its total annihilation.
Schelling, therefore, accepted the following proposition from Fichte: 'The ego produces the non-ego, that is, what is conscious (the spirit) produces the non-conscious (nature).' In doing this, Schelling accepted as sound the principles on which Fichte had based his conclusion. He then added the proposition: 'The non-ego produces the ego.' He does this because the non-ego (nature) wishes to attain consciousness of self. This addition destroys and denies all the principles with which the first proposition was established. Logical repugnance and intimate contradiction could not be more evident. Schelling called the teaching which developed the first proposition, Transcendental Idealism; the teaching which developed the second proposition, Philosophy of Nature. The first teaching begins with the proposition that the ego knows nothing outside itself; it follows that everything which it knows must be reduced to the ego. The second proposition begins from a principle opposite and contradictory to the first: knowledge exists together with something which is not the ego but tends incessantly to become the ego. The principle posited by the first proposition is therefore false. The division and contention between these two parts of the system of the philosopher of Leonberg is inevitably fatal.
155. Schelling, therefore, recognises that consciousness is not essential to ens: ens may or may not possess consciousness. I agree with this. But if so, no foundation remains to the reasoning with which he made the ego, after having posited itself, posit a non-ego equal to itself. The whole basis of absolute identity is overthrown. If it is not absurd for something to exist outside consciousness, how can it be identified with consciousness? If we can no longer have recourse to the specious reason: 'Everything must be contained in consciousness', but nevertheless wish to make something which is conscious identical with what is unconscious, we have to fall back to a series of unfounded opinions, destitute of every proof.
156. Schelling, therefore, makes what is unconscious first emerge from what is conscious, as Fichte made the non-ego emerge from the ego, and then makes what is conscious emerge from the unconscious. This Fichte did not do. Moreover, it is repugnant to Fichte's teaching. But how does Schelling explain brute nature, devoid of sensation and intelligence? He considers it as the unconscious act of a supreme ego.
How does he explain sensation, which he recognises as devoid of consciousness? He makes it emerge also from the supreme ego which, in the act of feeling, loses consciousness of itself.
How does he explain what is aesthetically beautiful. For Schelling, the supreme ego, which in the artist loses consciousness of itself, retains consciousness only of the beautifully produced and individuated works. But what is the sufficient reasoning adduced for this loss or self-limitation of consciousness of the ego? No reason is given, nor does Schelling provide any explanation of the moments in which this consciousness is sometimes obscure and sometimes enlightened.
How does he prove that these acts, these products (although he confuses acts with their products), although unconscious, must emerge from the ego which is consciousness itself.
He offers the same reasoning as Fichte: it is impossible for the ego to understand anything outside itself.
His argument, or rather his series of paralogisms, runs as follows: 'The ego cannot understand anything outside itself. That which it understands, therefore, must be produced by itself.' It is as though, for Schelling, understanding were the same as something in itself producing something different from itself. But even if it were true that the ego could not understand anything except in itself, we would have to conclude, because producing and understanding are taken as synonymous, that the ego can produce nothing outside itself (such as the non-ego). However, let us grant the paralogism.
We now have a non-ego produced by the ego, something unconscious produced by what is conscious. Schelling continues the work along the lines of his predecessor and says: 'This non-ego makes an attempt to acquire consciousness of itself, because it is produced by the ego, and therefore has it latent within itself.'
He offers no proof of this statement; no sufficient reason determines the non-ego to constitute itself as an ego. Nor, thirdly, is there any reason determining the moments in which the non-ego is void of consciousness and those in which it acquires consciousness. But let this pass. We still have to ask if the ego can be latent. We have to ask whether a latent ego, that is, consciousness without consciousness, is a contradiction in terms. In fact, consciousness which is not consciousness is NOTHING. Here already we trace the origin of Hegel's NOTHINGNESS. But Schelling's conclusion is even worse than nothing because it is a contradiction and an absurdity. Nothing is not an absurdity. We see, therefore, how nothingness necessarily led to ABSURDISM (a very apt word, so relevant to the system which it identifies), that is, to the affirmation that knowledge is founded on contradiction, the very principle of Hegel's philosophy.
157. To reduce what is essentially conscious, as the ego is, and what is unconscious to a single principle which sometimes acquires the consciousness it lacks and sometimes loses it, is impossible. First, these infinite movements of what is conscious into what is unconscious, and vice-versa, have no explanation, as I said. Second, the single principle can either lose consciousness, and in this case not be infinite because consciousness, the greatest value of all, is not of its essence, or cannot lose consciousness of itself but only of its acts and its productions. In this case, the duality which the system vainly wishes to reduce to unity and absolute identity re-emerges. Such a system may appear a wonderful achievement for a confused, darkened mental imagination, but it can never be produced by philosophical, wise reason.
158. There are therefore two parts to Schelling's philosophy. The first is Fichte's system, which draws the non-ego from the ego; the second, proper to Schelling, is the non-ego which tends to acquire consciousness and become the ego once more. I have examined the principles of the psychological nature on which the first is founded, and uncovered their lack of foundation. The second begins from principles of an ontological nature, which are such that they contradict the preceding principles. These ontological principles pertain exclusively to Schelling. We now have to examine them briefly. He found them in the Alexandrian Platonists. They all depend upon confusing the idea, which is object, with the intelligent being, which is subject. Their explanation, however, is rather original.
This is how Schelling expounds them in the dialogue entitled Giordano Bruno.
First, he endeavours to prove that the producer of artistic works is an eternal notion, and thus confuses the exemplary cause of such works with their efficient cause. Let us examine a passage from the book.
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Anselm: What, do you think, is the
producer of those works? |
According to Schelling, this is the way in which THE NOTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL is THE PRODUCER itself of aesthetic works. Having reached this conclusion, he adds that the notion of the individual is eternal, and that it is the eternal itself. He concludes that the eternal itself is the producer of these works. But this eternal notion of the individual, which is the producer, he later incoherently calls an emanation of the eternal, an emanation which resembles that from which it emanates. He then asserts immediately, without thinking it necessary to add the slightest proof: God 'gives to the ideas of things which are in him their own independent life, in so far as he permits them to exist as souls of individual bodies.' He goes on to deduce: 'Every work produced by the eternal notion of the individual has a twofold life, that is, an independent life in itself and a life in the producer.' In this way our philosopher believes he has demonstrated that 1. souls are divine ideas in so far as God permits them to exist as souls of individual bodies; 2. souls are identified with God as they are identified with their bodies; 3. notions, changed by Schelling into souls, are what produces aesthetic works; 4. these aesthetic works have life, or rather a double life, one in themselves and another in their producer.
159. Even the slightest logical capacity on our part must cause us to wonder how propositions of such a nature are enunciated so lightly. Surely, we think, they need the most rigorous demonstration. This, however, is characteristic of Germanic philosophy, which has caused such an uproar. For myself, I would prefer to ignore this uproar. It is impossible to avoid philosophical disaster if we allow ourselves to be deafened by the uproar springing from the multitude of dilettanti enamoured of such thought. I have no hesitation in affirming 1. that we see in Germanic genius a marked tendency to deductive, consequential reasoning; but 2. that we also see how weak it is in its practice of logic. Germanic civilisation, which is recent, pragmatic and hastily constructed, has not had sufficient time for dialectical exercise. Germanic philosophers lack analysis in the first place, and easily confuse ideas. They also lack demonstration and are satisfied with affirming proposition after proposition, one stranger than the other, without ever stopping to consider seriously the worth of their proofs. Let me support these statements with some observations on the passage cited from Friedrich Schelling's Bruno.
160.
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1. We are told that the finite is perfect when it is bound to the infinite, and that it cannot be bound with it unless already one with the infinite. But if the finite is already one with the infinite, it no longer needs to be bound to it. That which is one with something else is already bound to it, or rather is already made one with it. What does this word 'already' mean, therefore? It is nonsense. |
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2. Again, the expression 'one with the infinite' is ambiguous and requires clarification through analysis of its different meanings. This Schelling neglects. If 'being one with' means 'being identified with', what is finite is no longer bound to the infinite. What is identical does not need to be bound to itself, but be itself. It has no need of a mediator to be bound to itself. |
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3. After having said that the finite cannot be bound to the infinite except through the infinite and the eternal itself, Schelling concludes that a work which represents the greatest beauty can be produced only by what is eternal. In this conclusion he includes more than what is contained in his premisses where a distinction had been made between 1. a finite work and 2. the binding of this work with the infinite, a binding carried out by the infinite itself. The conclusion should have been that the infinite contributes to the production of the work which represents the highest beauty in so far as the infinite binds the finite work to itself, not in so far as it produces the work. |
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4. Analysis of the bond which is presupposed between a finite work and what is infinite is also lacking. This bond can come about in different ways. Schelling, in order to speak clearly and without equivocation, should have stated clearly and unequivocally the nature of this bond between the finite work and what is infinite. He overlooks this. 5. Again, he goes on to say that what is eternal does indeed produce the work which represents the highest beauty. It does so not considered absolutely, but as referred to the individual producer. But if the producer is the eternal itself, why bring in an individual producer different from the eternal, an individual producer to whom the eternal alone is referred? This is a contradiction. 6. Schelling then begins to explain the relationship according to which the eternal is referred to the individual producer. His explanation begins with the following principle: 'All things are in God only through their eternal notions.' This, however, is false because things are in God as in their efficient cause, not merely as in their exemplary cause. Why does Schelling admit, without any proof at all, a proposition so opposed to the teaching of all theologians and philosophers? 7. From the erroneous principle: 'All things are in God only through their eternal notions,' he deduces: 'God is referred to the individual producer through the eternal notion of the individual.' But God is not referred to the individual producer only through the eternal notion of the individual: with his omnipotence he also actuates the essence of the individual contained in this notion and thus causes the individual to exist. God creates the individual. 8. Schelling adds other words as though they were something springing up of its own accord, something for which no one could reasonably require any kind of demonstration: 'This notion is identified in God with the soul precisely as the soul is identified with the body.' But human common sense will always distinguish in God and in the human mind 1. The notion of the individual from the notion of the soul; 2. the soul from the body. The difference between the notion of the individual and the soul is infinite: the former is eternal, the latter contingent; they are not identified. The difference between the soul and body is a difference between substance and substance. But two substances, one of which is the term of the other, cannot be identified, although they can unite to form a single individual. Schelling, not only lacks logic, to which he never pays attention, but also common sense, which he thinks can be contradicted so thoughtlessly and gratuitously. 9. After having rashly asserted that the notion of the individual producer is identified with the soul, and the soul with the body, he concludes that this notion, also identified with what is eternal, is itself the producer of the work which represents the highest beauty. After having distinguished in his argument between 1. the finite and infinite; 2. the notion of producer and the producer itself, he goes on to confuse them. He makes no attempt to explain the aspect under which they are distinct, and that under which they are identified; he gives no indication of the origin of their separation and identification, no sufficient reason for such transformations. He has no regard for the way and the sense in which the phrase 'identification of several things as one' must involve absurdity, as he seems to involve it. His reason remains detached from anything of this sort. 10. If Schelling had said: 'The notion of the beautiful work, the eternal type' is what produces the work, his opinion would be more or less tolerable. He would then have to explain only the sense in which the notion produces the work, that is, as an exemplary cause. This, however, is not what he does. He offers something much more strange to his admiring disciples and expects them to believe it on his word. We are not dealing with the type or notion of the work, he says, but with the notion of the individual producer. But if the notion of the individual producer is the producer himself, that notion will not produce anything except the individual producer whom it represents. It will be able to produce only itself. One absurdity is heaped upon another. And because that notion is the soul, the soul will not be able to produce anything (if it were a producing notion) except itself!! This type of philosophy explains nothing. 11. The eternal notions found in God are souls. This is a consequence of Schelling's premisses. The fact is however that notions and ideas are intuited by intelligent souls; they are not the intuiting souls themselves. There is an essential, insuperable distance between that which intuits and that which is intuited. 12. It would be natural to believe, with all the schools, that eternal notions are always in God. Schelling, however, says that they emanate from God. Yet, while saying this, he affirms that although eternal they do not come out from God. Moreover, he offers no proof of any sort for these contradictory affirmations. He requires blind faith in what he says. 13. Perhaps we should believe that the eternal notions of God are of themselves souls? But no, they are souls because God permits their existence as souls of individual bodies. How such notions can desire to be souls; how this God can permit them to be souls; how, having obtained this permission, they can attain existence as souls: all this is left by Schelling to be conceived and explained as his kind readers wish. He does not think himself obliged to take the trouble to explain it. 14. Finally, what is the work which results from this producer who is sometimes that which is eternal, sometimes the notion of the individual, sometimes the individual, sometimes the soul? The work will always be something living. Indeed, it will be something living two lives, one in itself, the other in its producer with which it is made one. But what is life? How can this work live with two lives? How can a finite work of an individual producer be something alive? How can it be made one with its producer? These are further enigmas with which our philosopher exercises the faith of his disciples. Such is the constant logic of the series of German philosophers which began with Kant. Nor has it yet come to an end. We still have to speak about Hegel, the ultimate link. |
161. VIII. HEGEL.-The German philosophers began from the philosophy of the ego which they failed to analyse because of their unfamiliarity with analysis, as we have seen. Analysed, the ego yields the following result: 1. a fundamental feeling; 2. an intuition of the object, and 3. one or more reflections made upon self by the intelligent feeling which through them enunciates itself as I. The ego, therefore, involves the work of both reflection and the soul's self-consciousness. Our German philosophers founded their system upon one or other of these three elements, without embracing them all, and certainly without distinguishing them.
Fichte, by devoting his attention to the third element rather than the other two, spoke of the ego as possessing the nature of reflection. For him, therefore, the ego was essentially conscious. Schelling, who considered the first of the three elements and imagined an ego-feeling which is sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, failed to notice that a mere feeling is never an ego which, as ego, essentially requires consciousness and is, therefore, an appurtenance of intelligence. Hegel, like his predecessors, neglected the analysis of the ego, but paid particular attention to the second element. His primal ego was neither feeling, nor reflection or consciousness, but simple cognition, which is found between these two extremes. However, lack of analysis caused Hegel, like his predecessors, to confuse the knowing subject with the known object, and conclude that the known object was the knower. Again, every known object is twofold, subsistence and idea. Here, too, neglect of analysis brought Hegel to claim that every known object is idea. According to him, the Idea was knowing subject, ideal-intuited object and the real perceived object. Thus Hegel reduced every category of things to the Idea alone. And the Idea, having become everything, was necessarily God, the all-God.
162. Hegel, therefore, certainly did not take philosophy much further than his predecessors whose conclusions were substantially the same as his. However, they had not given much attention to demonstrating how the ego was transformed into all things and produced all the contraries possible to human thought. This was the work undertaken by Hegel.
Hegel's ego, therefore, was the Idea, and he undertook to describe its transformation into different categories of things. He used the accustomed method — which meant that he dispensed himself from offering any demonstration.
He asserted that Reason or the Idea (the confusion continues between intuiting subject who uses the idea, and the intuited idea of which use is made) has three moments in its being: it is 1. Idea in se and per se (pure, logical idea); 2. Idea in its transformed being, Nature, Fichte's non-ego; 3. Idea which turns back into itself from its transformed being (spirit, soul). Philosophy, therefore, is divided into three parts: logic, philosophy of nature, philosophy of spirit.
163. Let us consider the second moment of the Hegelian Idea and ask how the Idea is transformed into nature. Hegel does not explain this. In fact, even its supposition involves absurdity on absurdity.
1. The Idea is simply the object intuited by the spirit, the essence of things. For example, the idea of human nature is the essence of human nature; this idea is not any particular human being, but simply the type of human nature; it is human nature in its possibility. The same can be said of every other idea. We add something foreign to the Idea, therefore, if we posit in it any action which renders it an agent. We no longer have only the idea of the thing, but in addition an agent associated with the idea by our imagination.
The sole function of the idea, however, is TO MAKE US KNOW THINGS; real, subsistent things act. These two concepts, the type which manifests real things, and real, operating things, are categorically different. The first concept, the idea, can stand before our mind without real things. This happens when we think of something which is merely possible, something unrealised. Claiming that the Idea operates and is transformed into something else means, therefore, changing the nature of the idea. It means abusing the word Idea and substituting for it a real, subsistent nature, capable of activity; it means falling once more into the duality which these philosophers set out to overcome.(186)
164. 2. Every Idea whatsoever is immutable and eternal. Even the slightest internal observation shows us this.(187) The Idea, therefore, cannot experience any passion nor can it be the subject of any transformation.
165. 3. If the Idea could be transformed into nature, it would annihilate itself by losing its essential constitution, that is, its nature as light to the mind. But no being can annihilate itself, and even if it could, it could not then re-create itself and become another nature. Nothing cannot become something.
166. Let us consider the Idea in Hegel's third moment.
4. The Idea turns back on itself from the state of nature and gives rise to the spirit. But such a return supposes that nature is the Idea which, by preserving an identical quid, would not have suffered annihilation, but remained capable of operating. This, however, is impossible, as we have seen above (observation 3). For the same reason, even if the Idea had ceased to be Idea and become Nature, it could no longer return to being idea. Such a passage would first require self-annihilation of nature which, as annihilated, could no longer become anything.
5. I said that transformations cannot be explained or conceived unless an identical quid remains as the subject of the transformation. Hegel, however, makes no effort whatsoever to indicate the quid which remains unchanged in his supposed transformations.
6. The Idea, which is simple in the extreme and incapable of possessing two elements, one mutable, the other identical, cannot be subject to any transformation. It is immutable, as I have already noted in observation 2.
7. How can we conceive of the return of brute nature to the Idea? Or how can the Idea in its return become Spirit? These are mysteries for which Hegel offers no sufficient reason. Indeed, he offers no reason which would enable us even to conceive such a thing as possible.
8. The Idea can never become spirit, because Spirit is that which intuits; Idea is intuited by Spirit. There is, therefore, a natural opposition between them. Nor is it possible to have recourse to a third term which unites in itself these opposites, the intuiting Spirit and the Idea. In this case we would no longer start from the Idea, as Hegel does but from something superior to the Idea which, as Idea, would remain in the condition established by opposing terms. Moreover, this hypothetical superior term would encounter the same difficulties in its own development and transformation. The difficulty would be postponed, not removed.
Hegel proceeds without any regard for these immense difficulties. Adding one gratuitous affirmation to another, he reduces his entire teaching to an historical description of the Idea as it transforms itself into the most contrary things and into nothingness itself. His Idea, rather than being immutable, is never at rest.
167. It is certain that the transformations described by Hegel are, in his sense, operations of the mind. Fichte's erroneous foundation remains: 'That which knows, knows nothing outside itself; everything which it knows must necessarily be reduced to things which arise in itself.' Thus every reality is reduced to products of the mind and, as Fichte himself says, to appearances and dreams, and to dreams of dreams (as though a dream could dream). Granted, therefore, that the ego's transforming power is thought, Hegel begins by stating that thought can first conceive an abstract ens with all its determinations removed, and then remove the ens itself, which becomes equivalent to nothing. He concludes that this abstract ens equates with nothing. He calls it non-ens. But:
1. It is false that ens can be abstracted from ens. Abstraction, which does not go to this extreme, succeeds only in removing determinations from ens and leaving indeterminate ens, the removal of which is not an act of abstraction, but an absolute negation abolishing the object of thought. If the fruit of such negation persists thought is abolished. The negation of ens which results in nothing leaves no ens with which nothing can be equated.
2. Again, thought itself and its operations are seen to be different from ens-as-thought, if thinking carries out these abstract operations and denies ens. Hence, the thinking subject can never be confused with ens-as-thought, which is essentially thought-object. The negating subject remains in the negation, although unknown to itself.
3. If the thought-object is not that which thinks, what thinks thinks something different from itself. In this case, the principle that the thinker cannot think anything outside itself is no longer true.
168. On the other hand, Hegel appeals to thought itself which tells us:
1. that it can indeed abstract, negate, and pass from one object to another, but never transform objects into one another;
2. that besides ideas (the proper objects of thought), other entities exist which are not ideas but feelings and forces acting in feeling. Pure thought has no power to effect changes in these forces. If then we have to believe human thought, we find it declaring that it does not possess in any way the transforming power which Hegel attributes to it.
169. But even if our thought had this power, it would be necessary to assign some sufficient reason for explaining why it sometimes uses this power, sometimes does not use it, or uses it in one way rather than another. It seems that Hegel, differing from his predecessors and masters, felt the need to posit this reason. He said, therefore, that the supreme principle of philosophy is becoming. In such an act, nothing and being are united at what we may call their confines. Granted that no reason is required to explain the first principle, Hegel thinks that he can disregard any reason explaining becoming itself. But while no reason is required for evident first principles, they must certainly be justified if they are not evident.
This is definitely the case with Hegel's becoming, especially when becoming has in every case modes, laws and times for which some determining reason must be assigned. Do we have to add anything further? Hegel's very becoming is an obvious absurdity because it supposes that something becomes without any cause. While it is not absurd for a being, which first did not exist, to begin to exist provided it has some creating cause, it is absurd in the extreme for it to begin to exist of itself without any preceding efficient or material cause. To begin in this way is as absurd as self-annihilation. But, if this cause exists, becoming is no longer the principle of Ontology; there is a first cause which explains becoming itself and renders it conceivable to the intellect. We should, therefore, speak of this cause as the sufficient reason for all following acts and their circumstances.(188)
170. Nevertheless, granted the initial error, the other errors inevitably follow in some way. The series of erroneous propositions can be expounded as follows:
1. Thought cannot know anything outside itself (the fundamental error, transcendental idealism, subjectivism).
2. Consequently, there is nothing outside thought.
3. Consequently, that which is believed to exist outside thought is only a product of thought itself which produces the non-ego by denying itself.
4. Consequently, ideas themselves are productions of thought.
5. But thought itself, when reflecting that it can know nothing outside itself, makes the real world and ideas re-enter itself after having produced them as something different from itself. It recognises that these things are itself and are identified with itself.
6. Thought, therefore, can abstract and deny, and thus annihilate what it has created.
7. Moreover, thought can abstract and not think itself; it can lose consciousness and annihilate itself.(189) Thought (which embraces everything within itself) is sometimes ens and sometimes nothing. Thus ens and nothing are identified.
8. However, because the lowest degree in which thought can be found is this self-annihilation, and because thought can rise from this self-annihilation to all other degrees, this great nothingness is a kind of dark abyss from which all things come forth. — System of Nihilism.
9. Thought, therefore, has two terms: nothing and the highest degree of its activity. Philosophy, which cannot explain things unless it unites these two terms, comes to a halt at the point where nothing becomes ens. Such is Hegel's becoming.
10. But the greatest attainable activity for thought is that in which it acquires self-consciousness. Conscious thinking, therefore, as the ultimate development of ens, is that which these psychological pantheists call God. 'God is God,' Hegel said, 'only because he knows himself.'
This is a series of absurdities which, with some logical connection, follows on the first absurdity. Enumerating the physical, moral, social, etc, products of thought, and considering them all as identified with thought is the task undertaken by Hegel in all his voluminous works.
171. Let me repeat what I said when speaking of Schelling: this philosophy is only a reproduction of Indian philosophy, and especially of certain Buddhist schools. A recent writer said:
We have seen that Brahmism inclines naturally towards nihilism as a teaching, or at least towards the annihilation of all individual existences and thus towards total scepticism which, in the last analysis, is equivalent to absolute nihilism. But Buddha seems to have separated from the Brahmins in this sense: he substituted the theory of salvation through unification and absorption in Brahma (the only Being) with the theory of salvation through annihilation of all individualities and their total annihilation in absolute emptiness. The Void or Nothing took the place of Brahma's single substance. This, ontologically speaking, is the fundamental difference between Brahmism and Buddhism.(190)
The principle behind these Indian systems is totally psychological and forms the first proposition of the ten I have listed. The following are two theses found in certain Sutras cited by Burnouf:
| No phenomenon has its own true substance; |
172. Although this is not the place to explain the impious root of such a system, its iniquity was in fact proclaimed and professed in all its nakedness by Hegel's disciples. 'The very idea of God', they say, 'has no reality because it does not reflect on itself;(192) theology therefore necessarily cedes to the WORSHIP OF HUMAN NATURE; religion disappears in face of speculation.' Deification, worship rendered to man as the sole God, is the principle taken up by these madmen; it is the mature fruit of subjectivism. Our Italian subjectivists would do well to remember this.
Notes
(183) The philosophers who succeeded Fichte, that is, Schelling and Hegel, have expressly admitted the existence of many egos in the world. They say that what has no consciousness (brute nature) can acquire it, that is, make itself into an ego.
(184) Cf. Deshauterayes, Journal Asiatique de Paris, vol. 7. When a famous Buddhist, Tamo, was asked by an Indian king what Fo was, he replied: 'Fo is perfect knowledge or intelligent nature, nothing more.'
(185) Cf. Abel Rmusat, Mlanges posthumes, p. 122.
(186) Schelling glimpsed this contradiction when he said: 'This philosophy possessed, in the subject-object, a principle of necessary development. If however the pure rational element (whose only attribute lies in its incapacity for not being conceived) is pure subject, this subject triumphs over all objectivity (as I said), simply by raising itself to a higher subjectivity. But determined in this way, it ceases to be that which is incapable of not being conceived. This empirical determination was not originally present to the subject, and had to be granted by this philosophy either because living reality has forcefully entered such thinking, or because a philosophy of this kind needs a means for developing and constructing the exterior world' (Giudizio di Schelling sulla Filosofia del Sign. Cousin).
The censure is just, but Schelling shows that he himself is not entirely immune from the philosophical leprosy he notes in others because 1. he does not recognise the absurdity of a subject which produces its own object; 2. he admits that it triumphs over its own object by making the object re-enter the subject, which is also impossible; 3. the attribute he assigns to the pure rational element, that is, its incapacity for not being conceived, pertains solely to the idea — because 'rational element' applies to the idea only in so far as intuited by a subject, the pure rational element is never the pure idea and therefore not that to which the attribute, proper solely to ideas, pertains; 4. the idea is not subject but only a totally simple object which neither develops nor undergoes any change, because all development pertains to the subject, to which the attribute of incapacity for not being conceived has no relevance; and finally 5. every development and its process must have its sufficient reason as well as its matter - something which is ignored in the philosophical system under discussion where everything is affirmed entirely gratuitously.
(187) Cf. Rinnovamento, bk. 3, cc. 39-53.
(188) It is strange that a philosopher who claims to establish an a priori philosophy does not see that the concept of becoming is phenomenal. As Count Mamiani notes, 'Becoming contains a series of states, in each of which one thing is absolutely, and another absolutely is not, but will be absolutely in the next state' (Prefazione to Schelling's Bruno, §13). Consequently there is not in any way a point in which both nothing and ens are identified, or if there is, it is an abstraction which presupposes 1. a mind carrying out the abstraction, and 2. something on which the mind performs the abstraction.
(189) Precisely because thought can lose consciousness of itself and, as these philosophers say, annihilate itself, they should have known the absurdity of the whole system. If thought were everything and could annihilate itself, either there would no longer be any cause to call it back into existence or, if there were a cause, it would not be thought and duality would reappear.
(190) Cours sur l'histoire de la Philosophie, par l'Ab. Bourgeat de l'Universit Catholique, vol. 21, p. 325.
(191) Introduction l'histoire du Buddisme indien, vol. 1, p. 472.
(192) Doesn't the idea of God reflect upon itself? If ideas are identified with thought, just as nature is identified with it, and if the products of thought which deny thought can attain to consciousness, why cannot the idea of God do the same!