Commentary

Hegel’s Preface to the Philosophy of Right strikes some interesting notes in its attempt to make ethics a function purely of reason.  Since morality, in general, is a concept that is strongly associated with religion and spirituality (which, it seems to me at least, are on some level immaterial and non-rational), it is somewhat peculiar to see it presented in Hegel’s manner.

Hegel’s premise, that “reason…actualizes itself in the element of self-consciousness” through the function and action of the state, leads the way to his explicit notion that through each individuals’ manifestation of reason, the individual will reach the ethical conclusions of the state (257).   In the Preface, Hegel blames the variance of individual belief on man’s misconception that to have “free thought” is to have deviant thought.  This is the notion, he says, that leads to doubt and the belief in the subjectivity of the state’s laws.  His response begs the question, however, “what is it that accounts for the plurality of ideas among individuals, even those who pursue philosophical (thus, rational) inquiry?”

Hegel states, “as the thinking spirit is not satisfied with possessing the truth in this simple way, it must conceive it, and thus acquire a rational form for a content which is already rational implicitly” (256).  He grants that the individuals’ independent study of philosophy will result in an objective theory of ethics that could not be reached without such study.  As a purely pragmatic culmination of reason, thus ethics, perhaps Hegel is implying, not that a person will blindly come to the ethical conclusion of the state, but rather that a person will come to the conclusion that the state has the collective individual’s best interest at heart.  It is in this way that, “it must be on its guard against constructing a state as it ought to be. Philosophy cannot teach the state what it should be, but only how it, the ethical universe, is to be known” (263).

Moreover, the answer to my question is perhaps found in Hegel’s statement regarding the thoroughness of philosophical inquiry.  “A half philosophy leads away from God,” he says, “while a true philosophy leads to God… This saying is applicable to the science of the state. Reason cannot content itself with a mere approximation” (261).  Hegel would reconcile the variation of ideas among citizens of the state by asserting that for some (namely, those who are in conflict with the ideals of the state), philosophical inquiry has not been pursued intensively enough to understand the true nature of the ethical universe.  

Commentary on The State

            Is Hegel referring to the State as pertaining to family and family love, or is he making a universal connotation? Hegel believes that by nature men are unequal. Then, how does it provide for the equality of its citizens? If constitutions are not written or created, then what is the supreme law in a constitutional country? For instance, in the United States we follow the written document known as the constitution.

 In couple of your premises you alluded to the family as being the main focus or point in the idea of The State. When Hegel refers to the unification of the family through the feeling of love, he is using the family as an example. I am not refuting that it is not applicable to the concept of family, it is applicable indeed. However, he encompasses the nation as a whole. In addition, the will or volition of the citizens of a state will be within the confines of what is acceptable to the Establishment (535).

Hegel claims that within the government or constitution there would not be equality.  The reason being is because within the states arises inequalities among governing powers. For instance, the difference between the governing powers and the governed is a clear example of this.  Hegel further explains that citizens are legally equal, but the term equality, as true as it may seem, is mere tautology. Only those who share certain traits, behavior or characteristics will actually be equal before the law (286).

If constitutions are not written or created you are implying that Hegel denies their existence. Constitutions indeed exist to protect the reasonable will of the individual and The State. Constitutions are created because we as a collective spirit demand it. The necessity of feeling secure and protected is what is going to drive us to limit our volitions and establish the body of laws called constitution.  According to Hegel, it is in the inherit spirit of the nation, as well as in its history that constitutions have being created and are created. Therefore, constitutions in order to be created need to be written so in the case there is any confusion or thoughts of violation of the universal rights, we can  go back to revise it and make a clear judgment. In summary, Hegel claims that constitutions are written and created by the collective spirit of a nation (288-289).

Habit in the Moral Sphere

Conclusion: 
The moral sphere; the higher and purer regions of the mind and the heart coincides with the opening up within the soul of a world separate from the body.
Moral sphere uncovers spontaneity of desire found in the analysis of the motor habits; the habits of movement.

'' ... In the moral world the understanding distinguishes the end and the will proposes it, but it is neither the will nor the abstract understanding that can initially stir the powers of the soul at their source so as to push them towards the good. It is the good itself, at least the idea of the good, which descends into these depths, engendering love in them and raising that love up to itself." pp. 71(Of Habit)

Premises:

1. The soul has its own body

• The soul has its own life, destiny, and therefore its own goal to accomplish

     2. The soul separation into its own body and life illustrates the continuity of hierarchy of beings 

• The process happens by degrees, producing a superior life to which nature ceases aspiration  

     3. The moral life of the soul is the distinction between action and passion reflects as on the pursuit of Good and Evil; feelings of pleasure and pain which are emotions sensible to reflect on good and evil.

     4. The law of Habit operates in the moral sphere as it weakens physical sensations while resulting in a need for feeling. 

     5. Nature principle is Love; 

• Love expresses itself within each individual as a spontaneous desire for the good before the will
• The love within us can be identified as God within us. 

Commentary on §213-222: Is the Idea abstract?

Question: If the Idea is the totality of truth (through the dialectic), how is it more than merely an observation of the negative nature of truth, supplemented with an abstract concept? Is the idea of a totality merely a trick of words, enabled by negation, with no concrete reality due to it’s inconceivability?

In discussing Hegel’s explanation of the Idea in §213-222, the first necessary premise for Hegel’s concept to work, is that “the Idea is totality or absolute.” (170/213) This reference to totality is completely essential for the Idea to arise as a concept. Hegel continually refers to this necessity of totality in statements like “The Idea is the Truth,” (the Truth being the whole) and saying “everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea.” (170/213) Although at the surface this already seems to be an abstract concept that simply grasps as far as it can, he assures us that it is not. He goes as far as saying the Idea is “essentially concrete,” and he accomplishes this through the important aspect of negation in the notion.

In the 6th premise of the argument concerning the Idea, which refers to the essential concreteness of the Idea, the description of the notion is lacking in a consideration of the effects of negation. Hegel affirms that the Idea would indeed be an abstract form “only if the notion which is its principle were taken as an abstract unity,” (171/213) instead he suggests that the realization of the notion as a negative return into subjectivity gives it it’s concrete form. All the relations of understanding are “constrained by their nature.” (4c) These relations only become the truth through the negation that is necessary for the dialectic, and through their part in the totality. 


When premise 6 states that concreteness for the idea is created by the “notion birthing character to itself”  the essential aspect that it is missing is the negative nature of the notion. Concepts like Notion and Objectivity are impermanent when separated, their truth lies in their negative relations to each other, their dialectical aspect that makes them a “dynamic element of the idea.” (172/213). As a concept on its own Notion would only negate itself into its opposite, and in a truly totalizing fashion Hegel says “this transition, and the unity in which the extremes are merged and become factors... reveals itself as their truth.” (172/214) The conclusion of this argument is lacking in an essential contribution which is the attribution to the fact that the union which enables the Idea, happens through negation.

This aspect of the negative tendency of reality is an incredibly exciting one, it provides the framework for Hegel’s dialectic, and it seems to fit into the philosophical/historical tendency to want to unite opposed concepts like causality and freedom. However, I can’t help but want to pull back from this necessity of totalizing these relations and crafting them into such a grand concept as the Idea. Firstly, (and this is merely the individual’s subjective tendency) since the Idea is so necessarily a totality, one will never experience it, besides it’s impermanent manifestations. This incapability of grasping the totality makes it as distant a concept as God, using such circular reasoning as totalizing lends itself to. When Hegel says the Idea is everything, this is the same as saying “Everything is everything” but calling it by a different name the first time. If Hegel were here he would despise my comments because they are entrenched in subjectivity and neglect to see the negation, neglect to see everything. Who will see everything though? The only thing capable would be another abstract concept such as the Mind. Even if one studied the dialectical movement of history until the end, Hegel says himself “the Idea is the result of this course of dialectic.” (171/213) This particular course. Is it to be assumed that our particular human history will contain within it every possible relation? However, even if it did, it would remain an ungraspable idea, thwarted by the negation and totalizing that makes it possible. 

Auguste Comte, Positive Philosophy: Pg. 24-33

Conclusion:

Studying general science will help the progress of specialized sciences.

“The special study of the general traits of the sciences … will … contribute to the particular progress of different positive sciences.” (25)

Premises

1. Studying a specialized science alone gives people tunnel vision.

-Sciences become specialized so that the problems of different sciences can be separated, and thus solved more easily (26).

-When a problem needs the combined perspective of different sciences however, an addiction to one’s specialization hinders the solution (26).

2. Important questions in a particular science often need to be solved through a combined perspective with another science. (26)

-Descartes conceived of Analytic Geometry, which combined the principles of geometry and algebra. This simple unification of two subjects (that were once studied separately) led to great subsequent discoveries in geometry.

-To figure out whether Nitrogen should be regarded as an element or a compound, one would need the understanding of both physiology and chemistry, especially since (at Comte’s time) people from these two fields had distinct educated answers for the same question.

-All compounds are composed of fixed amounts of elements, except for organic compounds. A truly fundamental theory would take this exception into consideration, and it would be a theory that would have to be developed through the expertise of both physiology and chemistry.

-Sciences are specialized artificially. Naturally, many sciences are closely related (25).

3. We should study the general traits of science to get a perspective of different sciences.

-Studying many particular sciences in great detail is impractical and impossible (24).

-The particular sciences, in order to be studied practically, must be reduced to their essence- that is their principal methods and most important results. This is general science (25).

4. The study of general science will advance all the specialized sciences (25).

-Many particular sciences are influenced by theological and metaphysical ideas (29).

-The theological traits involve the interaction of supernatural agents. With the metaphysical traits, the supernatural agents are replaced by abstractions. They both seek, and often assume, absolute truths (2).

-The theological and the metaphysical are arbitrary, and will not be agreed on by everybody (30).

-Defining general traits of the sciences that can be agreed on by everybody will help eliminate the poisonous theological and metaphysical traits in many particular sciences (30).

-Without the theological and the metaphysical, what we will have left is the positive. Positive philosophy does not look for absolute truths (i.e. supernatural figures and abstractions), it does not look for the origin and final ends of phenomena. Instead, it looks for the invariable relations of successions and likeness (2).

-Metaphysical and theological philosophy has made very few advances (because they're so arbitrary), whereas positive philosophy has made constant advances (29).

Ravaisson: Part II:III/ pp. 55-67

Conclusion:

Habit allows for the inclination of the organs of movement towards nature, in which nature is beyond the will but at the same time necessarily bound to it.

“Beyond the influence of the central organ of the will- that is to say, within the immediate organs of movements- the inclinations constituting the habit are formed, and the ideas are realized. Such inclinations, such ideas become more and more the form, the way of being, even the very being of these organs.” (57)

Premises:

1. Movement results from an inclination that originates from the will (55).

2. Consciousness, insofar as it is aware of this inclination, is directed towards the end or goal that the will proposes (55).

3. The goal of the will is its own actualization, made possible by inclination moving further away from the will.

4. The beginning and end of movement are separate domains

            a. These domains, while they maintain their own identities, still relate to each other via the movement between them.

            b. Movement is what relates the will and nature, which are two extremes on opposite sides of movement; will is the origin and nature can be viewed as the end.

            c. The transition between these domains is continuous, and cannot be sensed (57).

5. In initiating a relation, movement itself fuses with the end, such that there is no separation between the domains of being and thought, of what is real and what is ideal, and of nature and the will (55).

6. Habit represents this movement, which continually binds, yet preserves, the will and nature by acting as an ever-changing, dynamic middle line that mediates them (59).

7. Despite being the distinguishable goal of movement, nature ultimately has its realization in the will and the will has its realization in nature. 

            a. Such realization, fueled by habit, is constitutive of the organs of movement. 

Commentary: Hegel

There is no truth without understanding, but can there be understanding without truth?

Hegel’s argument concerning the Understanding and Dialectic is built on it’s first premise stating the importance of Understanding in relation to truth. According to Hegel, understanding is imperative (92/80). There is no truth without understanding. This premise makes a strong claim that leads us to question what warrants Hegel’s right to even make it. Is it not that case that a thing can remain a truth even without it having been understood? Can we not believe a thing to be true without actually understanding it? It seems we are forced to answer “yes” to both of these questions. For example, I can know and believe that a Bison exists without understanding the biological characteristics of it. Or, to keep it more relevant to today, I can know and believe that binary codes play a central role in how information is stored on computers, without actually understanding how binary codes work. In other words, given these examples, it seems it will be safe to say that the truth of a thing does not depend on whether or not we understand it. My lack of understanding of a thing does not make it any less true.

A second question stemming from this premise refers to the reverse of Hegel’s statement. If there is no truth without understanding, does this mean there is no understanding without truth? If one answers “Yes”, then it seems there will exist a logical problem. Is it not possible to understand a thing that isn’t truth? If we examine this question further we are forced to agree that it IS possible to understand a “non-truth”. I can understand 1) the fact that it isn’t true, 2) why it isn’t true and 3) what this non-truth is. For example, I can understand the fact that the phrase “Pigs can fly”, isn’t true. Hence I have understood this as a non-truth, leading to the fact that there can exist understanding without truth.

One of the main problems people find with Philosophers is their use of language. Hence, this is why there exist Philosophers of language, who believe that most of the confusion and problems with the grasping of certain concepts would be solved if we studied and learned exactly what is meant by the “language” or word used in a given argument. In this case, a Philosopher of language would probably say that perhaps these discrepancies found in Hegel’s argument are due to our lack of knowledge or understanding of the “High Redefinition” Hegel has applied to the word “Truth.” A high redefinition according to Paul Edwards is best described as a high sense of a word. For example, given the word athlete, referring to my 2 year old nephew as an athlete just because he happened to catch a ball would be a low redefinitional statement, but if I said that someone who has won a Gold Medal at the Olympics is an athlete, this would be a high redefinitional statement. In other words, a high redefinition would consist of more than just the ordinary definition of the word.

Given this idea of high redefinition we can then begin to understand what is meant by Hegel’s strong claim in his first Premise. The statement “There is no truth without understanding” would be categorized as a high redefinitional statement. His use of the word “truth” here does not merely refer to things that are true. Premise 2 of Hegel’s argument states that the Dialectical stage is used by the understanding.  (95/81b).  In short, the Dialectic stage consists of the negation of a thing which in turn will lead to speculative or positive reason. If we apply this idea to a non-truth, simply put, the dialectic process will create a positive from a negative, a truth from a non-truth. If we go back to the idea that that we can understand a “non-truth”, and apply the idea of the dialectic we will find that the fact that we understand a thing to be untrue IS true. The negative has become a positive. In other words, a thing can be truly untrue. Hence, Hegel’s use of the word “Truth”, refers to both, things that are truly true and things that are truly untrue, all existing ideas. Furthermore, because the dialectic is part of the process of understanding, it will follow that understanding IS a necessary factor in the existence of any idea.

Given this idea, we can then reconcile with Hegel’s concept of the necessary relationship between Truth and Understanding. For it isn’t a matter if whether or not we can understand non-truths or that a thing can remain true even without our understanding, but that the very act of understanding itself, makes sense of things and allows us to know a truth of a thing, whether it is or it isn’t. Therefore, Hegel's premise stating that "There is no truth without understanding", will necessarily be true, since it is the process of understanding that will validate a truth. Finally, the answer to the question "Can there be understanding without truth?" will have to be "no", for wherever there is understanding (dialectic), there will always exist truth.