Karl Rosenkranz's 'Life of Hegel' 3/24 - The early Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature
(The article below is reproduced at hegel.net with the kind permission of its author, Stephen Cowley. It first appeared 1/2012 on the hegel.net Hegel mailing list and was then published 6/2012 as article with the pictures below on his blog ‘Hegelian News & Reviews’)
Here is a further summary of my reading of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel from whom later biographers draw extensively. This post covers the start of chapter 19 of Part One, by far the longest chapter in the book describing Hegel's philosophical system and philosophy of nature prior to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.
“Hegels Leben”, Book 1 (continued), chapter 19
The System
This is one of the longest chapters in Rosenkranz’s book. However, it
has a lot of interesting information from the standpoint of
understanding Hegel. Unfortunately, Rosenkranz places this chapter
prior to the one on Hegel’s father’s death, although it deals with
Hegel’s early system after his move to Jena around 1800 which was only
permitted by his inheritance from his father. In other words, Rosenkranz
has misdated Hegel’s Jena manuscripts to the earlier Frankfurt period.
Rudolf Haym made the same mistake in 1857. This of course, presupposes
that the Jena dating now accepted is correct. Osmo the French
translator refers to an article by Kimmerle in Hegel-Studien 4
for the evidence for this conclusion.
The material concerned has since been published in English in the USA
(System of Ethical Life, Jena Logic and Metaphysics). However,
as I previously mentioned, it is significant for Hegel-reception that
nineteenth century writers already had access to it through Rosenkranz
and this – frankly speaking – in a much more accessible form than the
modern English translations. In addition, as far as I know, the early
philosophy of nature has not been translated into English.
There is also some biographical and general interpretative material in
this chapter. Rosenkranz says that the ‘desire for system’ (which Haym
later condemned in Hegel) grew in him only slowly. Rosenkranz says he
started from concrete facts and only then sought principles.
Whilst in Frankfurt,Hegele bought books by Schelling, Plato and Sextus
Empiricus. The relations of Hegel and Schelling are well known, though
it is interesting to have evidence of Hegel’s continued engagement prior
to 1800. Hegel’s lectures on Plato are well known, but I find the
interest in Sextus Empiricus particularly interesting for the light it
sheds on Hegel’s concept of dialectic. There is certainly dialectic in
Plato, but it is less of a science than in Sextus as in Plato it emerges
ready-made from Socrates’ mouth and you never quite know if Socrates is
showing all his cards as he steers his dialogues. In his writings
(Against the Logicians, Against the Physicists, Against the
Musicians, etc) Sextus distinguishes dogmatists (e.g. Aristotle)
who think they know, those who think knowledge impossible and thus do
not enquire, from sceptics proper, who think they do not know in fact,
but continue to enquire on the grounds that knowledge may be possible.
Kant uses something of this at the start of the Critique of Pure
Reason (1781) and it is clear that the Germans knew scepticism
quite well (there was a book on the subject in 1794). It is worth
knowing this as many English-language writers seem to overlook Sextus in
describing the sources of Hegel’s thought. Hegel made use of his
knowledge of him in his early essay On Ancient and Modern
Scepticism. Sextus describes numerous ‘tropes’ (turns) or arguments
against the reality of knowledge (e.g. that it involves an infinite
regress of unexamined assumptions) and these bear some resemblance to
features of Hegel’s mature dialectic.
Rosenkranz observes that Hegel sought precision of expression more than
Schelling, trying to keep logic and mind apart conceptually and relating
them to nature. Hegel’s philosophy is not a critique based on a logic at
odds with common sense (a Neoplatonic theology with ‘the Concept’ as
prime mover). In fact, it is a philosophy of mind in the sense that this
is necessary for the emergence of a concept of nature and of the idea as
logical (the idea in this jargon being the content of philosophy). Hence
the young Hegel was not occupied with bringing facts under a logical
scheme. Instead, we find him interested in everything, but focused on
history as the work of the mind and religion as the most universal
expression of the mind’s concept of its essence.
For Hegel philosophy was a whole (as in Plato) and this was the origin
of the idea of system. A theosophic starting point was soon torn apart
by dialectic. By the end of the Swiss period, we find extracts from the
Rhenish mystic Meister Eckhardt and others amongst his papers. Hegel
moves from symbolism of triangles and squares to the Christian Trinity
as a fundamental aspect of Christianity. (If I might interject here,
this sounds like Hegel moving away from his earlier Life of
Jesus in which Jesus is a sort of Kantian prophet towards a more
orthodox understanding of the Gospels. The concept of mind requires
outward representation and the ideas of love and mind itself vie in the
manuscript material as forms of representation. That is what I draw from
the rather vague semi-theosophical musings of Rosenkranz here at any
rate.)
I now turn to Rosenkranz's presentation of Hegel’s manuscripts, which
are of great interest.
The content of the manuscripts
The manuscripts that Rosenkranz now describes are on:
- Logic and Metaphysics (102 sheets of paper)
- System of Ethical Life (30 sheets of paper)
However, the first of these includes some philosophy of nature. Hegel
identifies philosophy with the self-knowledge of the Absolute which he
distinguishes into Pure Idea, its realisation in nature and the return
to greater self-knowledge in mind. I did not note of any justification
for this identification when reading this chapter, so I will simply set
it aside as a putative piece of knowledge and note that it affects the
vocabulary of the following sections. My view is that knowledge is in
the first place an aspect of practical creaturely activity. At this
time, Hegel mixes phenomenological elements with his expositions. He
only tried to separate them with publication of the
Phenomenology.
Nature is thus conceived by Hegel at this point as the Other of Mind.
the reading of meaning into Nature is a kind of self-overcoming of Mind
at a theological level on the model of the German mystics. Mind realises
itself in Nature, but does not do so as mind. It realises itself as
life, but only comes to self-knowledge through history. There is a
certain amount more in this vein that I pass over.
Logic and Metaphysics
Hegel begins his text with the Logical Idea. At this time he
distinguished a logic of understanding (Aristotle) from a logic of
reason, which he calls Metaphysics. In this latter metaphysical logic,
he distinguishes:
- Categories of being
- Relation
- Proportion (of thought and being)
1. His notion of Being includes quality (determinacy/indeterminacy),
limitation and quantity. Rosenkranz relates this to Plato’s
Philebus, in which the limited and unlimited give rise to
measure. There is also an influence of Kant here, though Hegel places
quality before quantity and undertakes to deduce quantity from quality,
whilst in Kant they are taken to be elementary categories existing
side-by-side. An opposition of ideal and real at this point would
produce the idea of limit in which the Idea is present only as a beyond
or Ought.
2. Moving on to relation, Hegel discusses substance, causality and
reciprocal action in a discussion that draws on Kant, Fichte and
Schelling’s responses to Hume. He does not take the notions of subject
and predicate for granted, as does ordinary logic. He sees in
reciprocity a link between the ontological and the logical. Whilst
Spinoza began with substance and applied categories of understanding in
an external manner, for Hegel substance is subject. There is a kind of
contest of subject and predicate. There is a notorious ambiguity of
logical and psychological subject here.
3. Moving on to proportion, Hegel writes here of method, in which he
includes definition, division and proof. I warmed slightly to this, as
these subjects are neglected in the logic I learned and are better
presented in Aristotle in their practical bearings.
Rosenkranz states that Hegel operates with an idea of Absolute or
Supreme being as something by which finite judgements are found wanting.
However, he admits that the wording of the text is “very obscure”. I
have to say, I read the English translation of the text Rosenkranz is
summarising about twenty years ago and understood virtually nothing of
it beyond individual words and what was borrowed from Kant, so to get
anything at all out of these texts is an achievement of
Rosenkranz.
Philosophy of Nature
In discussing nature, Hegel tries to deduce it from mind, for he sees
mind rather than the Idea as a concrete totality. Rosenkranz notes that
Hegel struggles with words here. He cites texts where Hegel speaks of
the mind as applying ideas such as causality, substance, reciprocity,
quality, quantity, infinity to a being Other than itself – i.e. nature –
and introduces the theme of life. He distinguishes a philosophical way
of viewing nature from an ordinary way, but in highly abstract terms.
Rosenkranz thinks Hegel is borrowing here from the Timaeus of
Plato and that his thought has relatively little to do with Schelling’s
Naturphilosophie, in fact only what is common ground with the
empirical science of the day. Schelling focuses on dynamics and
chemistry, but Hegel starts with the Whole and Mechanics. Absolute Mind
presents itself as Ether (which Encke and Hansen conceived of as a
constant medium). Hegel describes it instead as an infinite elasticity.
This is a technical term from Newton.
The presentation begins with infinite space and homes in on earth. The
stars are an infinite plurality. Hegel says:
"The contraction of the native purity of the ether is the first moment of a negative, of the point, the star, simple equality with itself suppressing all difference, light diffusing itself absolutely.The stars are only the formal expression of the concept of infinity, an absolute plurality, whilst their quantity is an unlimited movement towards the outside. Their infinity is a negative beyond, a plurality of unities without unity just as much as a quantity without totality. This infinity is in itself irrational, a sublimity, as empty as its marvelling contemplation is void of thought. [The stars] represent in mute hieroglyphics an eternal past that has its present and its life only in cognition of this writing."
This shows that Hegel’s antipathy to the false infinite arose fairly
early in his life. At this time Hegel thus distinguished the Philosophy
of Nature into:
- System of the Sun
- System of Earth
The System of the Sun sees time and space as moments of motion. )If I
might interject here, this seems to come from Aristotle’s idea that time
is the measure of motion and it makes sense to me to see the origin of
abstract ideas in more concrete phenomena. It is at least an
intelligible intellectual project.) In the solar system, he discusses
the sun, comets, moon and planets by their distinctive kinds of motion.
He compares them to a syllogism with the sun as the universal middle
term. The idea of the stars as other suns seems to be lacking.
In the system of the earth, Hegel distinguishes mechanical, physical and
organic phenomena. Under mechanical, he discusses body, impact, fall and
as kinds of motion, ballistics, the pendulum and the lever. This strikes
me as admirably encyclopaedic, but it is not clear what the
philosophical contemplation is supposed to add to an empirical
classification. Under physical phenomena he applies the idea of a
process. Within this general idea he discusses azote, phlogiston (which
Rosenkranz explains is oxygen), hydrogen and carbonic gas. He invokes
the Timaeus and Aristotle’s oppositions of air, fire, earth and
water. The four elements also feature in discussions of sea, volcano,
atmosphere and solid earth. He identifies oppositions in salt, sulphur,
metal and clay. Rosenkranz describes this essay as ” ardent,
enthusiastic, audacious and poetic “, though less kind words might be as
appropriate. He says:
"There is nothing more false than the idea of a Hegel who would base himself entirely on Schelling in the Philosophy of Nature."
Hegel became more prudent and precautionary in his later writings on
nature. Rosenkranz cites Hegel’s description of the role of fire in the
natural world to illustrate the power of his prose and his manner of
attributing significance to natural phenomena. Fire emerges as an
absolute dryness that goes beyond crystallisation to combustibility and
Hegel invokes the comet, lightning, ordinary combustion and volcano as
different instances and degrees and combinations of it. Rosenkranz sees
in this a speculative elegance.
After this, from granite and clay emerges soil, which is the ground of
organic life, in which metal, sulphur, salt and earth are present. He
mentions chalk and flint. He interprets metals by their specific gravity
and reaction to oxygen, as in rust. The earth as the combination and
result of all these processes is a universal individual and it has a
history (meaning geology presumably).
All in all, Hegel combines qualitative and quantitative concepts and the
result of a kind of poetic speaking to empirical classifications and
observations of natural phenomena, with some effort at a logical
classification of the material. My feeling is that Hegel is blinkered in
seeing the stars and their sublimity only from a subjective standpoint.
There was in fact a debate in his day on the plurality of worlds that he
might have taken up more creatively. These passages would be of interest
to those interested in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature as it shows his
ideas in an earlier stage of development than in the later
Encyclopaedia.
The manuscripts now turn to ethical life