The Aufheben of the Philosophy of Right

The Aufheben of the Philosophy of Right This text is intended as a corrective to the dominant, what can be termed, “Verstand” tendency to interpret the Philosophy of Right (PR) as an independent treatise and the state and its structures, therefore, as possessing some kind of fixed, absolute self-subsistence rather than as Hegel himself wishes it to be understood—in a “Vernunft” or speculative manner. That is, as a “moment” of the whole; as a merely transitional stage in the becoming of absolute spirit and freedom. Many commentators of the PR are willing to concede the aufheben of the spheres of abstract right and morality into that of the state but, for some reason, are reluctant to acknowledge the supersession of the state and history into the sphere of absolute spirit. Ludwig Siep, NOTES See Ludwig Siep’s “The ‘Aufhebung’ of Morality in Ethical Life” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Action, eds. L.S. Stepelevich and D. Lamb (Atlantic Highlands: 1983). for one, is typical in recognizing the need for the first two stages to be sublated in the third and even does an admirable job showing how the structures of right and morality are preserved as moments in the state’s structures, but then comes to an abrupt halt. This leaves the impression that the state is the last word in Hegel’s theory—a very one-sided view that has led to the erroneous charge that Hegel regarded the Prussian state as the monolithic incarnation of the absolute itself. Richard Winfield’s bold attempt to revision Hegel’s political theory via a justice-freedom-interaction thematic, See R.D. Winfield’s Reason and Justice (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988). though deserving of praise for its analytical rigor and attention to detail, because it eschews the issue of the state’s ultimate aufheben and its consequences, it is unable to deliver the freedom it promises. The state and its arrangements in the end tend toward a reification that must inevitably occur when the state itself is not grasped as a “moment” within a still more comprehensive whole. Unfortunately efforts to correct this one-sidedness have been minimal. A pioneering work in this regard, though, is Adriaan Peperzak’s important essay, “‘Second Nature’: Place and Significance of the Objective Spirit in Hegel’s Encyclopedia,” Adriaan Peperzak, “‘Second Nature’: Place and Significance of the Objective Spirit in Hegel’s Encyclopedia” in The Owl of Minerva, Vol. 27, No. 1, Fall 1995; hereafter TOMSN. in which he makes a solid contribution towards our understanding of the transitional nature of the PR and the state, showing how one of the keys to grasping its limitations and the necessity for its aufheben lies in unpacking the meaning of Hegel’s characterization of it as a “second nature”. Of course, part of the blame for the “Verstand” tendency must be laid at Hegel’s door, it being his decision to publish the doctrine of objective spirit as a separate treatise under a different name and to downplay its transitional status; since Peperzak has already given an admirable account of the historical-polemical context that prompted Hegel’s decision, I will forgo doing so here. I would like to argue, with Peperzak, that an adequate understanding of the PR and the state can not be had unless one views it as a transitional concept and considers it especially in the light of key texts from other parts of the System, particularly the Encyclopedia, the only place where Hegel discusses all the parts of Philosophy in their interconnection. This text then, to be regarded as an extension of Peperzak’s ground-breaking work, will attempt to clarify some of the key issues still remaining that pertain to the “transitional” nature of the PR. For example: Can the PR indeed be regarded as a transitional work if the goal of an absolutely free-will is in fact fully attained within its domain, as Hegel seems to maintain and which if so would vindicate the Verstand version of the PR? Is the state/world totally transcended by its aufhebung into absolute spirit—or are its moments in some sense preserved; and if so, in what sense? Do we move from time to eternity when we move from PR to absolute spirit? What is the relation between the different realizations of the Idea, i.e. between freedom as the state, as art, as religion, and as philosophy? If I am able to shed light on just a few of these matters I will have succeeded in my purpose. I. As a preliminary it may be necessary to recall the speculative-teleological nature of Hegel’s System and the PR in particular, i.e., that it is in fact Hegel’s view that subordinate stages of science get taken up or are “aufgehoben” into higher stages and as a result lose their independent status and become demoted to “moments” of a whole. Citing the following texts from sundry parts of the System ought to suffice for our purposes. Thus, at Enc. §18 Hegel speaks of each part of science as both “a moment that flows” and that passes “into its higher circle.” The Encyclopedia Logic, tr. T.F. Geraets et al (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991), 42; hereafter EL. He warns us here that the mistake of a division of the whole into a logic, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of right, for example, is that “it puts the particular parts of science side by side, as if they were only immobile parts and substantial in their distinction … ” Ibid. This militates against taking the PR as an independent work. In the Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature Hegel states that, “the Idea first displays itself in each sphere so far as it can within the finitude of that sphere … then, the Concept through its dialectic breaks through the limitation of this sphere, since it cannot rest content with an inadequate element, and necessarily passes over into a higher sphere.” Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, tr. A.V. Miller (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 27. A prime task will be to identify the inadequacy and limitations of the PR’s sphere. In the PR itself Hegel notes that “the development we are studying is that whereby the abstract forms reveal themselves not as self-subsistent but as untrue.” Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, tr. T.M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 233; hereafter PR. This is very significant and seems to imply that not just property, morality and the family, but even the state itself, as abstract, is untrue. Also important are Hegel’s comments at Enc.§§381 zus. and 382 which state that subjective and objective spirit constitute “only the beginning” of spirit’s return into itself, a return “which is consummated only in absolute spirit.” Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, tr. W. Wallace and A.V. Miller (London: Oxford University press, 1985), 12; hereafter PM. Why this is so we shall see in the sequel. In the §382 zusatz he declares that “the entire development of the Concept of spirit portrays only spirit’s freeing of itself from all its existential forms … ” (16). This would seem to include the state and history, as well as art and religion, exempting only self-thinking thought, the infinite form. To be cited as a last piece of evidence that militates against a Verstand reading of the PR and evinces its “transitional” status we have Hegel’s famous comment at the end of the Science of Logic: “Out of [nature] the Concept ascends as a free existence that has withdrawn into itself from externality, that completes its self-liberation in the science of spirit, and that finds the supreme Concept of itself in the science of logic … ” Hegel’s Science of Logic, tr. A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1990), 844; hereafter SL. This is a telling text. Indeed, the key to understanding the whole System, in my view, and I think Peperzak would concur, is to regard it as a grand overcoming of nature on the part of spirit. First, in the philosophy of nature, nature completely overcomes itself, having “vanished” (Enc.§381) and revealing spirit to be its sole truth—although this is known only by us, not by spirit (the object we are studying). Then in subjective spirit, spirit succeeds in first separating itself from nature only in order to construct a “second nature” of its own, viz., the objective spirit or state which is studied in the PR. However, we still have here a “nature,” i.e., an externality and necessity, that have to be transcended. So from within this second nature, spirit performs its last act of freeing itself from nature altogether and rises to absolute freedom in art, religion and, its consummation, Philosophy. II. The first issue requiring clarification is this. Hegel seems to say in the PR that absolute freedom, the goal not only of the PR but of the entire System of Science, is in fact reached in the state (§§257-260). If this is indeed the case, then the state is not just a transitional element or moment to be sacrificed and aufgehoben in something higher, something in which the goal of absolute freedom will be consummated, viz., absolute spirit. No. On this score the state would be the supreme terminus, the end of all that preceded. It and its structures—as Verstand interpreters would have it—would be something absolutely self-subsistent, not requiring a further structure to complete it: that is, art, religion or philosophy, by which the freedom the state exhibits can be further augmented. This is a delicate and complex issue. To clarify and resolve it three things are needed. First, one must grasp what Hegel means by “absolute freedom” or an “absolutely free-will” as realized. Secondly, one must see that Hegel indeed says that this infinite will is in truth realized in the state but then, thirdly, further see that this realization in the state is only potential and in fact, according to Hegel, is conditional upon the ethical will or subject having raised itself via absolute spirit into absolute freedom. To begin with, Hegel provides an elucidation of absolute freedom in PR §§21-24. There he says, in essence, that the will becomes absolutely free when it reaches a point where it wills only itself or has only itself for its object; in other words, when it has become the Idea, the “truth” itself, and a perfect correspondence obtains between its concept and its existence or objectivity. Hegel remarks in §§22 and 23 that, “It is the will whose potentialities have become fully explicit which is truly infinite, because its object is itself … Only in freedom of this kind is the will by itself without qualification, because then it is related to nothing except itself and so is released from every tie of dependence on anything else” (30)—a true Fichtean definition of freedom. It is also important to notice that the absolutely free-will is for Hegel “not a mere potentiality (potentia) … but rather the infinite in actuality (infinitum actu)” (30). That is to say, “in the free will, the truly infinite becomes actual and present.” Thus absolute freedom is not, à la Kant or Fichte (and the majority of contemporary thinkers), a postulate to be approximated and to exist only in the beyond, but rather something “whose nature it is to be present here and now.” Also critical is Hegel’s remark in the §21 zusatz that the will’s attainment of freedom is a function of its elevation to universality, an elevation and purification of its object that is an activity of thought. Hence Hegel concludes that “it is only as thinking intelligence that the will is genuinely a will and free” (30). This inseparability of thought and will is largely ignored by commentators on the PR whose concept of the will thus remains deficient. The decisive question now becomes: at what stage is the “infinite in actuality” or absolute freedom realized—at the stage of objective spirit or only in absolute spirit? At first sight it seems that Hegel says that the state or ethical life (Sittlichkeit) as such—that is, apart from connection with art, religion and philosophy—constitutes the complete realization of freedom. For example at §142 he writes: “Ethical life is the Idea of freedom … [as] the concept of freedom developed into the existing world and the nature of self-consciousness”(105). While at §258 he observes that, “[The state], this substantial unity is an absolute unmoved end in itself, in which freedom comes into its supreme right” (156). Then again at §260 he insists that, “The state is the actuality of concrete freedom” (160). And finally, at §262 he declares: “The actual Idea is spirit, which, splitting itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters upon its finite phase, but it does so only in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual spirit [i.e., as the state]” (162). In the face of these texts it seems hard to deny that absolute freedom, that “infinite actual spirit,” has been realized in the sphere of the state as such. However, a closer study of the texts will reveal that the freedom and infinity that seem to characterize the state per se are merely potential and are to be actualized only by means of an elevation of the merely ethical consciousness into the absolute “thinking” consciousness of religion and philosophy. At least two key texts support this contention. The first is that of Enc. §483 which states that: “The objective spirit is the absolute Idea—however, as only existing as a possibility (an sich); in that [the Idea] is thus on the soil of finitude its actual rationality retains in it the aspect of external appearance” (PM 241). Thus, throughout the entire phase of objective spirit or the PR the absolute Idea, synonymous with absolute freedom, can indeed be said to exist, but only as a possibility or potentiality—and this because the state, as Hegel points out, as still in relation to nature, is enmeshed in finitude. The second text, Enc. §552, is that which Peperzak correctly identifies as effecting the dialectical transition to absolute spirit. It also serves to confirm §483 and underscore the defect of objective spirit and the PR and reveal why freedom cannot be realized within the latter. It begins thus: “The national spirit contains natural necessity and stands in external Dasein. The ethical substance, which in itself is infinite, is for itself [i.e., as realized] particular and limited. Its subjective side is saddled with contingency, unconscious custom, and a consciousness of its [rational] content as something existing in time in a relation to an external nature and world” (PR 282). Notice first that the ethical substance and, by extension, the state is only in itself or potentially infinite and not for itself or actually so. This contradicts Hegel’s characterization of absolute freedom, considered earlier, as the infinite in actuality and not merely in potentiality. For itself the state is actually finite, as a particular and limited state, infected with contingency and still related to nature and to other states which it excludes and comes into conflict with. Especially notice that the state, as wed to nature and externality, exists in time. This would seem to imply, among other things, that for the spirit to be actually free it must transcend time and situate itself in eternity, i.e., in absolute spirit. I would therefore offer that the transition from objective to absolute spirit is a metabasis from “time to eternity.” In fact this is precisely what Hegel goes on to say in this all-crucial text: “But the spirit which thinks in world history, by stripping off the limitedness of the national spirits and its own worldliness, at the same time grasps its own concrete universality and lifts itself up to the knowledge of the absolute spirit as a knowledge of the eternally actual Truth, in which the knowing reason is free for itself—while necessity, nature and history are no more than serving the revelation of that [absolute] spirit and vessels of its glory” (282). In this passage and in the zusatz that follows Hegel goes on to remark that the finitude and unfreedom still attaching to the state become thrown off only when the ethical subject within the state has elevated itself to absolute spirit (the “eternally actual Truth”), which significantly Hegel here identifies with God. Hegel moreover takes great pains to underscore that the ethical spirit thus elevated is virtually indistinguishable from the religious spirit. Indeed he says that, “True religion and true religiosity only issue from the ethical life (Sittlichkeit); religion is precisely that life rising to think; i.e., becoming aware of the free universality of its concrete essence” (283). Hegel even states here that the abstract negation of negation qua finitude resulting in the true infinite as presented in the Logic, receives at this point in the dialectic of “the real” its most concrete significance. I would even submit that the true, i.e., actual, infinite—or absolute spirit—only first comes into existence when the ethical-religious subject has negated itself, purified itself of its finitude, of its “subjective opinion and the selfishness of desire” as well as of its temporality, and thereby given literal birth to itself as the infinite in actu; as Hegel says elsewhere, “only from the chalice of this realm of [ethical] spirits foams forth for God infinitude.” Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A.V. Miller (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 493; hereafter PS. Hegel’s position then is, expressed somewhat differently, though it can be truly said that e.g., “the state is the actuality of concrete [absolute] freedom,” this is so only because the state contains within itself the venues whereby the knowledge of absolute spirit can be acquired, viz., art, religion, and philosophy. There is an even more decisive text in the PR itself which requires that it transcend itself, indeed that the goal of the work, viz., the full actualization of the concept of right (cf., §1) can only occur in the realm of absolute spirit, i.e., in philosophy alone. I refer to §352 where Hegel discusses the concepts of world history and the world spirit. First it is needful to recognize that world history is essential for right’s full actualization; the state by itself is insufficient. This is because although the right of the state is supreme, to which the rights of property, civil society and so on, must be sacrificed when the need arises (e.g., in war), there is something else whose right stands higher, viz., the world spirit, to which its right and that of all states must be sacrificed. The right of the world spirit is the highest because for Hegel the goal of world history, the final end of the world, of all states and their doings, is the consciousness of freedom on the part of Spirit. What is crucial is that by the latter Hegel does not mean a merely “political” consciousness of freedom due to the attainment of fully rational objective institutions in the state. Hegel means rather a “philosophical” self-consciousness, something which is betrayed in §352 by his use of the word “absolute knowledge.” There he writes: “Around [the world spirit’s] throne [the national spirits] stand as the executors of its actualization and as signs and ornaments of its grandeur. As Spirit, it is nothing but its active movement towards absolute knowledge of itself … towards freeing its consciousness from … natural immediacy and coming to itself” (PR 219). This interpretation seems to be supported by the Phenomenology where Hegel says in its final paragraph that, “The goal of [History is] absolute knowledge, or Spirit that knows itself as Spirit … ” (PS 493). Thus, what is not difficult to see, if the PR’s terminal category and right is that of the world spirit, which in turn can be actualized only in the self-comprehension afforded by philosophy, then the PR indeed “overreaches” itself. It is only complete if it extends to the absolute domain of philosophy. Absolute freedom thus is not attained in the PR, i.e., in the state or even history as such, but only in philosophy (and religion). Thus the PR proves not to be a self-contained work. It can be properly understood only in connection with philosophy and in the context of the overall movement of Spirit and of the System as a whole. It is merely a transitional stage in the becoming of freedom. To use Hegel’s language: Spirit is the truth of nature, objective spirit the truth of subjective spirit, the soul, and absolute spirit the truth of objective spirit, the PR and the state. Also, since Hegel’s somewhat attenuated accounts of the defects and limitations of the state in the Encyclopedia and PR leave much to be desired, I think it would be helpful to quote the following illuminating and quite refreshing passage from the Aesthetics: Now, at a higher level, the life of the state, as a whole, does form a perfect totality in itself: monarch, government, law-courts, the military, organization of civil society, and associations, etc., rights and duties, aims and their satisfaction, the prescribed modes of action, duty-performance, whereby this political whole brings about and retains its stable reality—this entire organism is rounded off and completely perfected in a genuine state. But the principle itself, the actualization of which is the life of the state and wherein man seeks his satisfaction, is still once again one-sided and inherently abstract, no matter in how many ways it may be articulated without and within. It is only the rational freedom of the will which is explicit here; it is only in the state—and once again only this individual state—and therefore again in a particular sphere of existence and the isolated reality of this sphere , that freedom is actual. Thus man feels too that the rights and obligations in these regions and their mundane and, once more, finite mode of existence are insufficient; he feels that both in their objective character, and also in their relation to the subject, they need a still higher confirmation and sanction. What man seeks in this situation, ensnared here as he is in finitude on every side, is the region of a higher, more substantial, truth, in which all oppositions and contradictions in the finite can find their final resolution, and freedom [nota bene] its full satisfaction. This is the region of absolute, not finite, Truth. The highest truth, truth as such, is the resolution of the highest opposition and contradiction [cf., Science of Logic, “The absolute Idea contains within itself the highest degree of opposition” Miller, p. 824]. In it validity and power are swept away from the opposition between freedom and necessity, between spirit and nature, between knowledge and its object, between law and impulse, from opposition and contradiction as such, whatever forms they may take. Their validity and power as opposition and contradiction are gone … The ordinary consciousness, on the other hand, cannot extricate itself from this opposition and either remains despairingly in contradiction or else casts it aside and helps itself in some other way. But philosophy enters into the heart of the self-contradictory characteristics, knows them in their essential nature, i.e., as in their one-sidedness not absolute but self-dissolving, and it sets them in the harmony and unity which is Truth.” Hegel’s Aesthetics, tr. T.M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 99. Notice especially that the above makes it abundantly clear that despite the impression the texts of the PR give, absolute freedom and man’s total satisfaction is in no way to be found at the level of the state and its institutions. This is because the freedom and satisfaction the state per se provides is tainted by contingency. The state as a finite and particular state is opposed to other like states on which it depends, e.g., for recognition. And even if recognition and freedom can be secured they are extremely fragile in that they may be lost at any moment, as war may break out or a natural disaster or a tyrant may accede to power. Thus in a state man is free and yet not free—i.e., to the extent that his freedom is rooted in a particular state and an external nature. To be genuinely free he must rise to a trans-temporal object which grounds his freedom and provides him with the knowledge that “the finite is not.” Indeed, even if the whole state goes under he is secure in his possession of a freedom which nothing can destroy. We must now also clarify the important concept of “the world spirit” and its relation to the totality of states and to the philosopher in particular. In a word, Hegel’s concept of the world spirit is “holistic” in essence, and the philosopher occupies a central, yet humble (be it noted) position in it. In the first place, Hegel says at Enc. §549, “This movement [of History] is the path of liberation for the spiritual substance, the deed [die Tat] by which the absolute final aim of the world is realized in it … ” (PM 277). Notice Hegel speaks here of all of human history as a single deed. What this implies and is borne out by the Philosophy of History, is that in a real not figurative sense, all nations or states of the world, past, present, and future are contained in, “live, move, have their being within,” a single spiritual substance which is the world spirit; there is not a single person or people which exists or can exist outside of this Spirit. Moreover, even the nations that played no part in the realization of the universal deed are appointed to partake of the benefits of the freedom won by the world historical nations. It also should be remarked that it is only in virtue of the Concept, as Peperzak too notes (TOMSN 61), that the divisions that plague all political societies will be overcome and the goal of “one humankind” be realized. However, this goal of unity will be achieved only on the plane of absolute spirit, not on that of objective spirit, which is ever subject to the contingency and necessity of nature and where separate states and the conflicts this occasions will always remain. Moreover, although it is true that the great impulse and aim of freedom manifests itself in political life, rights, laws, art and religion as well, philosophy, the veritable mind and self-consciousness of the world spirit, is its highest manifestation and concern; and this mainly because the Science of Logic, pure philosophy, contains the highest type of self-knowledge, and also because the history of philosophy for Hegel parallels the evolution of the logical Idea, which as Hegel says, “is alone being, … self-knowing Truth, and is all Truth” (824). Consider further the following crucial text from the Phenomenology: “Consequently, until Spirit has completed itself in itself, until it has completed itself as world-Spirit, it cannot reach its consummation as self-conscious Spirit” (488). Now we must ask: when does it finally complete itself as world-Spirit? Hegel continues: “Therefore, the content of religion proclaims earlier in time than does Science, what Spirit is, but only Science is its true knowledge of itself.” Ibid. It completes itself thus only in Science, in the Concept—and not in religion or art, let alone in the state per se. Indeed, Hegel is most emphatic when he declares that, “But as regards the existence of this Concept, Science does not appear in Time and in the actual world before Spirit has attained to this consciousness about itself. As Spirit that knows what it is, it does not exist before and nowhere at all, till after the completion of its work … ” (486). Now of course we all know—some of us with reluctance—what this implies. –Namely, that the world spirit achieved full self-consciousness and thus perfect absolute freedom for the first time in human history in the philosopher, i.e., in G.W.F. Hegel. This may be hard to swallow, but the only question is whether it is true or not. All I will say here is that it should be borne in mind that tremendous humility is involved in the attainment of the goal of absolute knowledge and freedom—attaining God, if you will; as even Fichte knew. For at this point one has completely transcended or converted one’s individuality into universality. J.G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, tr. P. Heath and J. Lachs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 84. Let us, moreover, recall Hegel’s words at the end of the Phenomenology’s Preface: “the individual must all the more forget himself, as the nature of Science implies and requires.” Thus it seems beyond question that not only is freedom not realized at the level of the state, implying that the state is in fact transcended and thus cannot be final, being only a necessary condition of absolute freedom; but philosophy’s “absolute knowledge” is indeed the highest realization of this freedom and the terminus of all the spirit’s efforts, to which all is ordered. III. Interlude I must confess that I hesitate to broach the next issue, but the urgency of our contemporary situation compels me to do so. It is obvious that we are in pain. It is also obvious that Hegel believes he has the antidote to our pain, one that will enable us to truly “dance” as a result of our having experienced the undying Rose of Reason in the cross of the present (PR 12). However, I feel that to truly profit from his antidote we must confront the full force of his great claims and not settle for a diluted, watered down, “politically correct” Hegel. If we default in this we never will be able to, in Heidegger’s words, “lift ourselves up to the greatness, breadth, and originality of [Hegel’s] spiritual world and truly realize it.” M. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Yale University Press, 1961), 37. What then are his “great claims” which contain the antidote to our illness? Namely these: Philosophy knows the Truth, has knowledge of God, and is able to realize not relative but absolute freedom. But his most decisive claim, which few are willing to countenance, is his at once sublime and scandalous doctrine that man in his essence, i.e., the philosopher or the Concept, not merely has knowledge of God, but rather is God himself. (Schelling therefore was right—but wrong of course in his critique of the Logic. F.W.J. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, tr. A. Bowie (New York: Cambridge University press, 1994), 135. E.g., “For [Hegel] the Concept had the meaning that it was God.”) There are many texts which corroborate this and are quite familiar to most Hegel scholars. Here are just a sampling. In the Phenomenology’s penultimate chapter Hegel states: “God is attainable in pure speculative knowledge alone … and is only that speculative knowledge itself” (PS 461). Thus clearly there is no difference between God and speculative or absolute knowledge. Also from the chapter on Absolute Knowledge: “The goal of history is the absolute Concept … The Concept is the knowledge of the Self’s Act within itself as all essentiality and all existence” (492, 485). That which contains all existence within itself can only be God. In the Philosophy of History Hegel plainly declares that: “Man … is God [although not immediately but on condition that] he annuls the merely limited in his spirit and elevates himself to God.” Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956) 324; hereafter PH. In the Philosophy of Right Hegel proclaims at §358 “the unity of the divine and human natures” (222). And most openly at Enc. §194 Hegel says: “It is our chief business to … lay aside our immediate subjectivity (put off the old Adam) and become conscious of our true and essential Self as God” (EL 273). Again in the Philosophy of History (322) Hegel underscores that, when in the garden the serpent said to Adam “you shall be as gods,” God does not deny but rather confirms the words of the serpent by saying, “Behold, Adam is become as one of us (as gods).” He goes on to say that: “But [sadly] it is only God that declares this—not man: the latter remains, on the contrary, in a state of discord, and the joy of reconciliation [a “reconciliation” which results precisely from this knowledge that man’s true self is God] is still distant from humanity; the absolute and final repose of his whole being is not yet discovered to man. It exists, in the first instance, only for God [cp., for us (the We), not for consciousness)].” What is most important in Hegel’s gloss on religion, therefore, is not that religious Vorstellung should be raised to the Concept but rather the reason for this, viz., that man may connect with and fully appropriate the powerful truth contained in the Vorstellung: to wit, that man, that We are God. Hegel repeats this again in the Phenomenology first at the end of “Morality” where he says that the universal “Yes” of forgiveness that reconciles the two moral subjects, “is God appearing in the midst of those knowing themselves in the form of pure knowledge,” and then, more tellingly, at the end of “Religion” where he reveals the real meaning of the so-called “death of God” and of the Christian religion itself. True, “God Himself is dead,” Hegel intones there, but by this Hegel only means that the traditional God who is outside us, the abstract God, has died, not God as such (the misreading of Kojeve and Solomon). God, he goes on to say, has in fact precisely in virtue of this death, negation or inversion become the inside or concrete God, has become man, has become us—substance has become subject: for “just as [religious consciousness] is subject, so also is it substance, and hence it is itself absolute Spirit [or God]” (PS 777). Now, how does this doctrine that “We are God,” bear upon our present situation and help us to better understand and adjust ourselves to the meaning of our time? First, I would offer that just as Christ’s word was intended to replicate himself in others, so the Concept is meant by Hegel to reproduce itself, i.e., absolute spirit or God, in his readers—compare Hegel’s “the in and for itself existing Idea eternally produces, begets and enjoys itself as absolute spirit.” PM, 315. Also see Meister Eckhart, tr. E. Colledge and B. McGinn (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 187-188, for example: “The Father[the eternal Idea] gives birth to [or begets] his Son without ceasing [or eternally] … he gives birth to me as himself … as his being and nature.” It is significant that when Franz Baader lent Hegel some of Eckhart’s writings Hegel upon returning them remarked, “Here at last we have found what we were seeking.” Cf. Reiner Schurmann, Meister Eckhart (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978) 245, note 111. I am indebted to Robert Williams for this citation. I would thus like to submit—and the evidence for this is considerable—that what is taking place today is almost identical in import with what took place 2,000 years ago, that is, that a profound parallel is to be noticed between the nihilism of our time and the nihilism that prevailed at the end of the ancient world. –Both periods experiencing the “crushing ruin of gods and men” and the collapse of traditional faith, morality and values and an all pervasive “unhappy consciousness.” Thus, just as this condition in the former precipitated the incarnation of God and the birth of a “new world” so too in our own age. However, in our case it will be the incarnation of “Gods,” in the plural—and on the basis of the Concept. Also in our case, what is very important, the redemptive liberation won by the collective going inward (insichgehen) will result in a universal redemption of the outward as well—compare Nietzsche’s word, “the earth will become sacred”—and this because our Spirit has passed through the modern period, the period of objective spirit, of objectified reason. It seems to me that this potentiation to a divine-humanity, to an “age of the gods,” is our inevitable and certain destiny. It must happen and is happening, and this because the need, the existential pain we are experiencing is so great and so universal. One should also note that Hegel and Schelling were both fully aware of the pain and nihilism that was destined to enter the world, following the collapse of the old order, a negative period however to be succeeded by a positive, triumphant one. Schelling thus observes in his 1840 Berlin lectures that: “the truly informed person will see in [the phenomena that threaten dissolution] only the omens of a new creation, of a great and lasting revival—a revival that, admittedly, will not be possible [nota bene] without grievous misery […].” F.W.J. Schelling, Sammtliche Werke, 14 vols. (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856-61), 13:10. I will forgo citing Hegel’s remarks in the Phenomenology’s Preface concerning the transition to a new age as they are too well-known. Thus that We are God is Hegel’s most important claim—all else must, I would contend, take a back seat to it. Given it to be true, that it can be demonstrated (and this is what the entire System is ultimately intended to do), then it is incumbent on humanity to actualize this truth, to raise itself (“sich auf-heben”) collectively to God. The foregoing, I offer, alone contains the solution to our crisis, our way out or “exodus” from nihilism. IV. Now we must ask, what is the precise sense of the “aufheben” of the PR and of the state? There is no simple answer to this question. Although the Verstand interpreters of the PR would like to view the state and its institutions as in some real sense self-subsistent, as structures fixed and enduring in their finitude, the systematic strictures of the principle of “aufheben” vitiates this position, for, as we saw above, all subordinate stages in the dialectic of spirit must undergo negation, be reduced to “moments,” and pass over to a higher stage, their truth. Thus, as Peperzak TOMSN, 62. has pointed out—on the basis of §552 and §577—in the end objective spirit, the state and history all become transcended and taken up into absolute spirit, the sphere of the eternally self-subsistent, nature and history now demoted to its mere insubstantial appearances. Thus it seems undeniable that for Hegel the state, in fact the world, is not something self-subsistent but has only “momentary” status, has a subsistence that is a vanishing or a “show” (see the crucial Enc. §386 and also the §381 zusatz). Yet on the other hand, there are passages such as PR§360 where Hegel does seem to envisage some kind of coexisting of “the state, nature and the ideal world” (223) as mutually independent and complementary spheres, distinct from each other however embodying the same truth or Idea. This can be called a “horizontal” rather than a “vertical” and hierarchical manner of viewing the different parts and spheres of the Idea. They can be regarded in this way. But the crucial overriding consideration is that the subordinate spheres of the Idea’s appearance as aufgehoben, no longer have the same status they had prior to aufhebung. That is, from the standpoint of the Spirit that has completed its journey and passed through the lower spheres, they no longer exist, or are experienced, as self-subsistent beings—or they exist, but in “recollection” alone. Thus one is truly free in regard to them, they are no longer felt as an obstacle, other or limit to oneself, they are fully transparent, and can offer no resistance to the self’s penetrating glance HSL, 326: “The method … [is] the absolutely infinite force, to which no object … could offer resistance … or could not be penetrated by it … It is … also its supreme and sole urge to find and cognize itself by means of itself in everything.” (Hegel’s italics).; the self sees only itself in the state. Indeed, the absolute Idea contains within itself all determinacy, all earlier forms and limited embodiments of itself—so they can have for the free spirit no independent being whatsoever. The more difficult question, however, is even granted that right, property, sittlichkeit, and history, and so on, have lost their abstract independent being and been reduced to moments of the whole, of the dialectics final result, viz., absolute freedom, what is now the peculiar status of these moments, i.e., what is the relation between absolute freedom and these moments which though aufgehoben are nonetheless preserved? More concretely. Granted I have attained to absolute freedom, to the liberation of the Concept, have “overcome the world,” shifted from Verstand to Vernunft, have painstakingly immersed myself in all determinations and structures of reality, have mastered the great secret of their pretended self-subsistence, how upon scrutiny the contradiction within them causes them to dissolve or “deconstruct” and pass over to a higher structure, suffering the same fate, until the very last form, the infinite form, is reached—which I have just reached. Granted, I am now in ecstasy as a participant in the famous “bacchanalian revel” in which no form remains sober or stays put, but spontaneously turns into its own other—yet an unbroken calm pervading the entire experience—granted all this the question is: Do I now experience, comport myself differently than before as regards these structures and forms—or the same? Surely not the same. But how so? I will advance two conjectures. The first is suggested by Hegel’s comment in the Preface of the PR that the reason why an individual is not able to fully enjoy or “dance” in the present is because “he is still fettered or chained to some abstraction or other which has not been [nota bene] liberated into the Concept” (12). To access the key this text provides it is needful to recall the function or method of philosophy. What philosophy does is to reduce the “given” by stages into a unity (). See e.g., PS, 17-22, where Hegel discusses the transformation of immediacy into Vorstellungen, then into thoughts, then Concepts, and finally into the Concept or Being-for-itself; and EL, §§1-11, 20-23, where Hegel defines philosophy in terms of effecting that same transformation. In essence, the infinite manifold of experience is first reduced-transformed into “concepts,” and then these concepts are transformed or dissolved, by dialectic, into a single “Concept”: Being has been transmuted into Thought, in a word. This is the method of all true philosophers, e.g., Plato (although Hegel criticizes him for not having completed the final reduction). Thus, when Hegel says that “a fetter of some abstraction not yet liberated into the Concept” stands in the way of our freedom and enjoyment of the Now, he means that an individual still has a “Verstand or thing-consciousness.” That is to say, the state or family, e.g., exist for such an individual, for his consciousness, not as a “concept” but rather as a “thing.” As a “concept,” what is called and experienced as “the state” stands in fluid interconnection with a system of concepts and can thus only be regarded as a “moment” of the whole and not possessed of fixed, self-subsistent being. The opposite is true of the state regarded as a “thing.” It can be said that the Verstand person is enslaved as “ontologically” attached to the state and thus anxious over its continued preservation. This is because the state for him, as an object of his consciousness, has being and as such confirms him as a finite entity. This circumstance requires that he identify himself with the state (or whatever object or determinacy), i.e., with that being which is experientially not his, i.e., not continuous with his being, but which nonetheless is ontologically or “in itself” his—since to be at all, implies being one, whole, or infinite (and not finite or divided). See PS, 487, where Hegel says that “the Whole is present for natural consciousness [which is in a subject-object, I-Not-I state] … but not as comprehended.” That is, the Whole exists in a divided state, it does not yet exist as a Whole, as a one; it is not yet speculatively comprehended—or there is still a separation between Thought and Being. His need to “identify” with the state is at once a shackle which binds him; for he is fearful for the state’s (object’s) existence, that is, truly understood, for his own existence. His being and oneness depends upon that of the state. The case is just the opposite for the Vernunft person, the philosopher, for he does not identify with the state in such a way. He knows this being of the state to be a “show” or, perhaps, a being that belongs to himself (this is one of the most difficult issues). For the philosopher the differences in reality or experience are not “things” but rather “concepts” (or “categories,” i.e., thought/being identities See EL, 56-64 and PS, 142, 491, 21.)—and, as in Plato, to be regarded as self-dissolving/resolving or -sublating “steps” () Plato, The Republic of Plato, tr. F.M. Cornford (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 226. leading, as it were, to the mountaintop, to the Good or the Concept, i.e., to absolute liberation; liberation, that is, from limitation or bondage to any and all determinations—liberation to a state of sheer indeterminacy or absence of determinacy (i.e., of unresolved, unsublated, unovercome determinacy). This is what Hegel calls “absolute or infinite negativity,” the inherent sheer restlessness of freedom, of the Concept—which desires to be and remain infinite, not having anything standing over against itself (gegen-stand) which would make it finite. In fact, freedom and infinity for Hegel are interchangeable concepts. Thus, it can be said that the structures or determinacies of the PR in a sense “exist and do not exist.” They exist so long as one is occupied with them and has yet to perceive the internal contradiction which leads to their self-dissolution and passage into their truth. Once one has seen this, has obtained this wisdom via philosophy—these structures no longer exist as such, or they exist in a merely “ideal” or “momentary” sense (much as indistinct shapes on the horizon of absolute knowing, or as a “fringe” relates to its “focus,” à la William James). Of course, other persons present a special problem. It seems quite callous to simply regard another person as a “concept” or “moment” of a Concept—to assume an attitude of simple indifference and non-attachment, an unconcernedness over his or her well-being. This is a complex issue and requires a careful unpacking of Hegel’s concept of recognition and its inner relation to the Concept itself. For an in-depth treatment of Hegel’s concept of recognition showing that this concept is fundamental to an adequate understanding of the Hegelian project as a whole see Robert Williams’ excellent Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Here I will make three comments. Number one: The Concept is not just a thought or concept in the ordinary sense of the term. This is because Hegel says that it has or is “personality” (SL 824, 841). Number two: Hegel also speaks of the Concept, of this “personality,” as an “identity-in-difference,” as a “we that is I,” as an “I which has become a duality” (PS 110, 409). This seems to mean that when one has actualized the Concept in oneself, one has achieved a universal, not particular, consciousness. In some (strange or “speculative”) sense, one now has a consciousness, a Personality, which contains not just one’s own personality but that of the Other (any Other, all Others) as well—yet, and this is crucial, while not thereby violating the integrity and independence of the Other’s personality. Thus, there is not a sheer collapse of the Other into oneself, a Levinasian “reduction of the other to the same.” Hence, oneself (one’s Self) can be said to “over-reach,” “over-arch” the Other—yet in such a way that the duality is retained and not nullified. The best word for this is still Hegel’s (or Schelling’s): “identity-in-difference.” –Something that can only be comprehended speculatively; that is, by means of a pure thinking which has overcome the natural opposition of subject and object or, simply, has overcome nature. One also can recognize striking similarities between the Concept and Fichte’s “absolute I.” Recall that for Hegel the Concept is the “pure personality which embraces everything within itself (SL 841), a definition also applicable to the Fichtean I. Number three: There is an infinite difference between a thing and a person, another self. It is impossible for the philosopher, the liberated Self, to have a cold, uncaring regard for the others in his society. This is because the Other is, at least potentially or ansich, another Concept, another embodiment of the Concept, of absolute freedom and infinity. The Other is just as I am. It is thus not incorrect to say, in Judeo-Christian parlance, that the Hegelian Concept is the fulfillment of the Jewish law, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” For the Other is in a real sense, one’s self, i.e., one’s higher, universal Self. Indeed, Hegel states at Enc. §159 that the Concept “as feeling, is love, and as enjoyment, is beatitude” (EL 234). Why is this? Because in the Other, which remains Other, “I meet with myself” or “have my own being and creation”—for the Other is “flesh of my flesh … bone of my bone.” Hence, far from being indifferent towards, the philosopher has infinite compassion for, the Other. —And, I would submit, is in a class of his own in this regard, since he alone knows the true worth of things and institutions—knows that they are intrinsically ideal or nothing (and thus too, “nothing to get hung up about”—in the poet’s words.) Thus he cares only for his fellowman and not at all for things, See SL, 89, where Hegel says that, “man has a duty to rise to that abstract universality of mood in which he is indeed indifferent to the existence or non-existence of [finite things, e.g.] the hundred dollars, etc.” and is able to devote himself single-mindedly to their needs. He stands ever ready to teach them, to help them free themselves from some fetter or other which still imprisons them and to lift them up into the same freedom that he himself enjoys, and to make any sacrifice for their behalf as well. The second complementary conjecture is the following. There are four senses in which the state can be said to exist after aufheben, three of which pertain to the philosopher, who has passed through all stages and is free, and one of which relates to the self who has yet to rise above the state into freedom. For the latter, the ordinary consciousness or aspiring philosopher, the state/world, as an object of consciousness, is experienced as having objective independent being apart from himself. No matter how much he succeeds in identifying his will with the universal Will, his satisfaction remains limited, for he is still entangled in finitude, contingency, and externality (or mere appearance). This is true with respect to both his theoretical and practical dealings with the world. For the free philosopher, the situation is quite different. Three “senses” correlative with three “perspectives” reveal themselves. The first—and we must borrow from Fichte here—can be called the “speculative” or properly philosophical perspective, which contains the other two within it in a state of potentiality. Here one is in a state of pure consciousness, lost so to speak in absolute freedom, in the sheer indeterminacy or pure activity in which all determinacy is submerged, no attention being directed to any one determinacy; it is a state of pure uninterrupted bliss ( ), an object-less consciousness (cf., the Fichtean “absolute I”). It may happen that the philosopher then deigns to think of something, to dip into the pool or mine of endless determinacies and select one for consideration, the concept of “the state” for example. Here, he adopts a “theoretical” perspective. Though in a sense he becomes limited and finite in that he now has an object, he in reality is not, since he has complete knowledge of this concept, thus knows the state’s true ideal status, and has already made it his property; and in relating to it he relates only to himself. By contrast, when the ordinary consciousness or person thinks of the state he is still limited, since it exists for him as uncomprehended, a fetter to his freedom. Then, as the philosopher is also “embodied”—and this is somewhat tricky, since the philosopher can withdraw his will from his body at will and become “unembodied” (PR §48)—and thus involved in manifold relations flowing from that embodiment, it may happen that he has to descend to the “practical” level and have dealings with the things of the world or nature. Here too, though he freely takes on finitude, limits himself, and gives himself a practical object—he remains free. This is because he voluntarily and temporarily permits the state to have a real, objective independent being; as Fichte and Schelling See Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 182, e.g., “[T]he transcendental idealist maintains that there is no transition from the objective into the subjective, and that both are originally one … [how then are we to explain this transition, which] we are obliged to assume when we act? … Undoubtedly by this alone, that through this very act we in fact first make the world become objective to us.” (Italics added). too have shown, one can only act if one institutes a subject/object distinction within one’s absolute I (the sphere of one’s absolute freedom); that is, to act one must act on an independently existing world or object—this is a necessary presupposition of all acting. Thus he remains free because he knows that the state in truth does not have a real independent being, that it exists only within his infinite, absolute consciousness. For he knows that the state is something ideal or a vanishing (Enc. §381) both 1. qua nature or a natural spatio-temporal existent and 2. qua world or “second nature,” a realm of objective institutions of freedom—that is, as something which in its essence is the same as himself, hence not an Other or a limitation. But note there is a risk and an aporia here (which I have not as yet resolved). If the philosopher totally forgets or loses contact with his absolute I, this seems to open up the possibility of his becoming, as it were, “lost” in the practical perspective or attitude and coming to regard the state/world and all that it contains as real, in a permanent sense. The issue is then: Can the philosopher get so caught up in the excitement occurring while he is “stationed” at the practical level that he, so to speak, believes his “dream”—of the world’s independent being and all the angst that attends this—to be reality? I think the answer must be in the negative, for otherwise his freedom would be compromised. But I am not perfectly clear on the reasons for this. To sum up. In this paper I have tried to show that the fact that there is a sense in which the state in the PR is the full actualization of freedom does not count against the PR’s being in truth a merely “transitional” work. I have also tried, granting that the state and PR are indeed aufgehoben into absolute spirit, to clarify the “senses” in which the state can still be said to exist after its aufheben. Lastly, I have tried to suggest why Hegel’s most important claim, that of the man/God identity, is to be more decisively confronted by the Hegel community and the way it can indeed be used both to help us better understand our present historical situation and to perhaps surmount nihilism as well.  14