[U.S.] Tom Rockmore: “Hegel: Before and After—An Introduction to the Historical Thought of Hegel,” translated by Ke Xiaogang, Peking University Press, April 2005
This is a very good introduction to Hegel’s thought. As the blurb on the cover says: “The main aim of this book is to provide a very simple—but by no means simplistic—road into Hegel, serving as a guide to the thought of a man who belongs among the most important philosophers of all time.” After reading this book, I have deeply felt the profundity and importance of Hegel’s thought, even though my appreciation of Kant’s philosophy still seems to far exceed my appreciation of Hegel’s. But I have come to understand that Hegel’s rebuttals of and developments upon Kant are quite profound. After reading this book, I felt that Hegel’s thought is extremely “interesting” and very much worth taking seriously. In this respect, the value of this book has, for me, been fully demonstrated. Of course, whether this book’s commentary on Hegel is accurate, and how exactly I myself view Hegel’s thought, are questions on which I will only be qualified to speak after further reading of primary sources. So what follows is merely a simple excerpting of some chapters that may be useful—or may be useless.
P2 pp. XIX~XX (Introduction)
Like all great philosophers, Hegel is difficult to deal with. I think that while the difficulties encountered in handling Hegel’s texts are not illusory, they are nevertheless manageable and should not be exaggerated. Clearly they do not constitute an insurmountable barrier, even if the reader in question is a beginner, a non-specialist, or someone who merely wants to know a little about Hegel and has no intention of devoting a lifetime to professional textual study.
This book is neither more nor less than an introduction to Hegel’s thought. It is simplified—but not oversimplified—so that all readers willing to read it and think about it can understand it. For it presupposes no prior philosophical knowledge on the part of the reader. To begin with, I try to show how Hegel, starting from his own position and using his conceptual forms, grasped the philosophical debates of the historical age in which he lived; then, as a second stage, we shall extend his discussion to the entire philosophical tradition.…………
P8 p. 8 What is transcendental philosophy? Put in the simplest terms, transcendental philosophy refers to a philosophy that aims to determine the conditions of knowledge from a standpoint prior to—and therefore independent of—all experience.
P31 p. 44 However, in a famous remark, when Kant described Fichte’s view as a hopeless attempt to derive objects from concepts, Kant sharply rejected this claim of Fichte’s.
P32 pp. 44~45
Kant always tended to analyze knowledge in terms of the subject-object relation. Therefore, in Kant’s view, there could not be knowledge of objects in the world without a subject—this subject being what Kant calls the “I think,” the appearance of the object term. He explicitly stated that his view of the subject—that is, his concept of the transcendental unity of apperception—was the culmination of critical philosophy.
P34 p. 48
As one of the possible interpretations of things in themselves, the causal interpretation can find textual support in Kant’s writings. In a famous passage, Kant holds that phenomena are phenomena of something that appears through phenomena; otherwise there would be a phenomenon in which nothing appears. (BXXVI~XXVII) Kant’s principle, understood in this way, is technically new and conflicts with some literal statements of critical philosophy. (Note: In Kant’s theory, because causality is a category of the understanding, its function is limited to “producing” the forms of phenomena and cannot serve, beyond experience, as a source of knowledge-content.) But,……
P36 p. 51
While breaking with the Cartesian model, Fichte also broke with Reinhold’s attempt, under the form of rationalism, to reconstruct critical philosophy as a grounded system. In place of such a system, he inaugurated a new concept of system, one that would not admit a foundation in the strict sense.
P36 p. 52
Fichte…… hypothetical…… philosophical science never contains certainty…… we cannot overstate the importance of the last point above…… finally, from the concept of a groundless system there emerges……
P38 p. 54 If Fichte’s account is trustworthy, then either knowledge constitutes itself within this necessary circular structure, or knowledge is impossible. This is the lesson Hegel first took from Fichte.
P53 p. 77
Kant at most thought that human beings are historical beings, but he could not examine his concept of the historical human being with his non-historical concept of knowledge. Hegel was the first thinker to examine both the historical and the systematic aspects within a single philosophical picture.
P59 p. 87
The first strategy Descartes speaks of is to let the later reason in an argument depend on the earlier reason, just as an effect is determined by its cause. The second strategy is exactly the opposite: it uses the later reason to argue for, or “prove,” the earlier reason, or explains the cause through the effect. It was precisely this latter strategy that Fichte employed.
P60 p. 89
Although Hegel and Fichte used the same form of argument, Hegel drew a different conclusion from Fichte’s. Fichte believed that if the process of cognition is circular, then any claim about knowledge can only be hypothetical. Hegel’s line of thought, however, is this: it is not the starting point that proves the middle, but rather the reverse—the end proves the beginning. This mode of argument is obviously circular, because the end, the result, or the purpose in turn argues for the starting point.
P63 p. 93
Unlike Kant, Hegel always kept a fairly close distance to living experience. We can put the point more simply. In everyday life, we locate ourselves by developing an understanding of the world and of ourselves. If we cannot begin from an absolutely certain point, we do not panic, because such a point does not in fact exist in everyday life. The question is how to attain knowledge under the condition of facing up to our situation. When experience contradicts what we believe, we do not get annoyed, nor are we even surprised, because we know that in practice no theory is truly reliable, and every theory that depends on experience must submit to experience’s refutation. Human history consists of a long effort to construct valuable viewpoints. Theory emerges from our history and then constantly renews itself in order to serve more experience in the future.
P63 p. 94 Hegel’s own theory of knowledge includes the following three points: the importance of system, the rejection of foundations, and the insistence on true knowledge.
P84 p. 126
We have mentioned that Hegel criticized Kant’s moral philosophy as abstract morality, and that he wanted to replace it with a concrete concept of ethics, or morality immanent within a concrete social situation. Likewise, we can distinguish pure reason, the theme of Kant’s critical philosophy, from spirit: the latter is Hegel’s proposed alternative concept of reason, but this reason is not pure, and necessarily belongs to what is impure, or contextual—that is, it appears only within finite social, political, and historical contexts.
P89 p. 133
Let us return to consciousness. It seems useful, even natural, to clarify the conditions of consciousness on the transcendental level. We have emphasized more than once that for Kant the only way to prove the possibility of knowledge is to reason before setting out on the path of knowledge. For Hegel, however, such a path is not only difficult but impossible. It cannot succeed, because we cannot—using Hegel’s language—separate the conditions of consciousness from consciousness itself, or—using Kant’s terminology—draw a distinction between the conditions of knowledge and knowledge itself. Unless it is within and through the process of cognition, we cannot examine the means of cognition, such as the pure reason of critical philosophy. In a famous passage, Hegel sarcastically compares the view that one can figure out the conditions of cognition before the act of cognition to an empiricist “clever” idea: learning to swim before going into the water.
P94 p. 141
By what criterion can we judge knowledge? We must reject any external criterion.…… When the object for us, that is, the object as it appears in experience, coincides with the object in itself, knowledge arises.…… When an identity appears that can withstand any criticism, the final stage or absolute stage of knowledge, namely absolute knowledge, is overthrown.////——The question is why such an absolutely reliable identity should be possible in the first place, and how it could be established.
P99 p. 148 In a little-known note, he (Hegel) wrote the following: he said that he was a Lutheran, and that he was proud of it.
P99 p. 148 He thought that the difference between religion and philosophy was not a difference of objects, but of internal forms of consciousness: religion appeals to imagination rather than employing philosophical concepts.
P100 p. 149 According to Hegel, religion is consummated in philosophy.
P100~101 pp. 150~151
Although Hegel was also an idealist, he believed that we human beings can ultimately learn only those things that are products of our experience—that is to say, in the process of human history, after passing through the various stages of consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason, reason finally develops into spirit, followed by religion, and ultimately reaches absolute knowledge. Throughout this whole process, whatever we encounter along the way is in some sense our own product, or even ourselves. He expressed this idea as follows: “Things are I.” From this perspective, science is nothing but self-consciousness, or that moment at which we finally realize that our object, or indeed our entire experience, is nothing but ourselves.
P101~102 p. 152
We can further describe Hegel’s theory in contemporary terms. Clearly, Hegel is not a skeptic, because he believes that knowledge exists. Nor is he a foundationalist, because in the Cartesian sense of the term foundationalism, Hegel’s theory has no external foundation. Hegel can best be described as an epistemological relativist, although this formulation is bound to provoke controversy. Given that Hegel insists in several works that when concrete reason—what Hegel calls spirit—exists and functions as the instrument of philosophy, it is relative, necessarily relative to time and space, we can say that Hegel’s theory belongs to relativism—if relativism is understood as the view that all claims of knowledge are claims made from a given perspective. For Hegel, the result of absolute knowledge is this: if we trace epistemological questions to their roots, then we will recognize that no claim of knowledge is absolute, because all such claims are relative. ////——To call Hegel a relativist is indeed startling, but as described here, this seems more like what I would call a “perspectivist” stance distinct from ordinary relativism.
P103 p. 154
Hegel believed that relations between people depend on and ultimately can be traced back to desire, thereby providing his analysis with an anthropological foundation. In Hegel’s view, desire is a basic feature of the human being and also the source of social interaction; it can attain final satisfaction only in the recognition of oneself by others. ////——The problem is that such desire can never be finally satisfied.
P103 p. 155 In Hegel’s view, the ultimate root of social life is not to protect oneself from harm by others, but to bring about recognition of oneself by others.
P114 p. 170
In this chapter dealing with the beginning of science, Hegel tries to show that in fact we cannot begin from just anywhere, but must begin from being. He first says that the beginning of philosophy should be neither direct nor indirect.……, and being can satisfy precisely the dual condition of being neither a direct beginning nor an indirect beginning. Hegel offers two arguments to show that the logical path to knowledge can and only can begin with being.…… These two arguments partly overlap. The first shows that the beginning is appropriate for the Science of Logic, that is, for the science of pure concepts. The second is intended to deny that an absolute beginning could depend entirely on something else. In short, he emphasizes that the discussion in the Science of Logic cannot begin with anything other than being.
P115 p. 171
How, starting from being, to advance to the other parts of the system of science. To accomplish this task, he offers an interesting analysis of being, nothing, and becoming. The aim of this analysis is to show how being, as the necessary and only possible starting point, necessarily transforms itself into nothing, and how nothing in turn transforms itself into becoming.
P120 p. 179 According to Hegel, what distinguishes philosophy from the other sciences is that only philosophy cannot presuppose its object and method.
P126~126 p. 186
For Hegel, there are three foundational sciences: physics, chemistry, and biology. He believed that there is a reciprocal relation between physics and philosophy: physics constrains philosophy, while philosophy expands and completes the knowledge of physics. Hegel believed that nature has continuity and necessity, but it does not know freedom; only human beings understand freedom. At the conceptual level immanent in natural events, philosophy’s task is to display the necessity in nature. Different levels of nature cannot be reduced to one another: for example, Hegel thought that biology cannot be reduced to chemistry, and biology and chemistry cannot be reduced to physics.
P132 pp. 196~197
What is philosophy? At the end of the preface to his last book, Hegel answers this question in a famous passage. In order to argue that philosophy cannot provide instruction on how the world ought to be, Hegel firmly states that philosophy often, and only can and must, appear very late. As a scientific grasp of being, philosophy can only carry out its work after what it describes—its object—has already taken shape, or in other words only after the fact. He wrote: “As to teaching how the world ought to be, philosophy always comes too late. It is as the thought of the world only after the fact that philosophy first appears in reality.” It is precisely for this reason that philosophy cannot urge events to happen; it is fated only to trail far behind events.
P140 p. 208
A persistent concern in his (Hegel’s) thought is the effort, within the standpoint of philosophy, to prove rather than blemish the truth of religion. As we have mentioned, this effort continued even to the final moment of his life. Yet the tension brought about by this unstable integration of theological insight within the philosophical system ultimately led to an explosion from within.
P149 p. 222 Although opinions differ widely about the state of Marx’s theory, the simplest and most accurate formulation may be: Marx was a German philosopher.
P153 p. 229 Marx was not only a German philosopher; in many respects his theory is continuous with German idealism, and even belongs to German idealism.
P158 p. 236
Marx’s criticism did not intersect with Hegel’s theory, or only partially did so. To put it plainly, Marx was asking questions from another angle. Ultimately, Marx did not reject Hegel’s theory. Like all great philosophers, he merely changed the discussion by changing the topic and shifting the direction of the questions.
P162~163 p. 242
According to Nietzsche, we must distinguish between philosophical workers and philosophers. Philosophers are not analyzers of values, but creators of values. In this way, he returned to Kant’s view: Kant believed that the true philosopher is the legislator who determines the tasks and ultimate aims of human reason. Nietzsche thought that a philosopher should not be merely a worker who criticizes the past and the bad conscience of the present age, as Hegel conceived it; rather, he should be someone who rejects contemporary ideals and creates values.
January 26, 2006
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Wu
2006-01-26 16:49:37
[Reply]
I looked at a few excerpts, and I think this book really is pretty good—just too expensive. Peking University’s pricing is now pressing right up against that damned Century from Shanghai!
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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