{296} (cont’d)
III. The realization of reason
Hegel himself tells us that the determination of the idea can follow three different paths. First, it is the one we have just explained, namely, to describe what is an idea, absolute spirit, the spirit that is identical, and furthermore knows in its identity that it is reality and subjectivity identically, it is logic occurring. In the second place, the idea can be manifest as an occurrence towards concretion, which is precisely creation. And in third place, this occurrence has a dialectic structure by which the production of things, which are not but possible in that absolute spirit, reverts in its reality to the very structure of that spirit, which is what we shall have to discover.
Therefore, we have two problems.
In the first place, what is the formal structure of creation for Hegel?
In the second place, what is the concrete stepping march of creation?
1. Reason as thinking activity. Reason and creation.
The first thing we have to keep in mind in order to apprehend this difficult Hegelian thought, which is his whole metaphysics, is not to loose sight of the fact that for Hegel creation is not {297} strictly speaking production, we shall presently see why. For the time being, we should anticipate the idea that for Hegel to create is not to produce, but something different that, without doubt, has some relationship with production, but is —recovering an old terminology that originated with Kant and Fichte— position, creation is position. We shall see in what this position consists and what is its relationship with production, for the moment we put this aside.
Let us start from the moment it is the idea, the absolute spirit, just as we found it at the end of the logic, what does it issue? This is the second concept, which is necessary to keep in mind to comprehend what Hegel understands by creation.
What is issued is something “out of itself”. In this sense, creation is exteriorization (Entäusserung), but exteriorization with a peculiar characteristic. Indeed, up to now the term “position” can be vague and confusing, but terms have been used vaguely and confusedly when talking about creation even including eminent theologians. Does not St. Thomas say that creation is emanatio entis? And yet, St. Thomas is no emanationist (Sp. emanantista), and the term must be a proper one although we all know what it means. The term “position” is not at this moment a term that may engender grave difficulties, although afterwards complications will set in. It is a case of placing something outside God in one form or another, which does not appear to be improper. The difficulty proceeds from the fact that for Hegel this exteriorization is not a simple otherness. The exteriorization, then, means that something, which is definitely absolute spirit, issues precisely “outside itself”, not ceasing to be what it is itself, when issuing outside itself. Since this absolute spirit and {298} absolute reason, as a position that creation is, is of reason and from reason, it means that definitely for Hegel this exteriorization is not simply otherness. It could not be an absolute and rigorous otherness in any theology of creation. It could not possibly be maintained, even in the most transcendent of theologies that God and the world might numerically be two. This would be absurd, since the fact they are not identical does not mean they are “two”. Here the concept of number has no strict application.
Up to now Hegel appears to say nothing particularly momentous or difficult beyond the internal difficulties of the problem. But Hegel says something more, that when we have this terminus, apparently other and in many senses really other, it is because it is issued by the absolute spirit, it is a kind of realization of absolute spirit. I believe this is also traditional in the theology of creation, in which there are many real things, many additional “entities”, but there is no more “being”, since God is the Ipsum esse subsistens. But Hegel says something more, he says that in that “de-position” of absolute spirit, in that, which this absolute spirit issues from itself, in this action, he converts itself by this act of position into another facing him. This is the sense of “ex-teriorization”, which is not simply to stand outside, but something more strict and rigorous, a rigorous alienation. That which constitutes the very essence of absolute spirit is alienated into that which it issues; therefore, creation is above all, position; in second place, it is Entäusserung in the sense of alienation.
But then, we must ask Hegel. With this exteriorization how does the absolute spirit continue to be really and definitely absolute, given the conceptivation of it he has provided to us in his metaphysics? Hegel will tell us that certainly there is alienation, but is not left behind {299} absolute spirit, but is an action the absolute spirit performs precisely to be able to enter into itself and be itself to itself. The essence of alienation is mediation (Vermittlung). This is the third concept. Creation is in the first place, position; in the second place, alienation; in the third place, mediation.
Mediation in Hegel does not mean it is “intermediacy”. For example, the cascades of Plotinus are old in the history of philosophy, revived more or less by Al-Farabi at the beginning of Muslim philosophy. But in Hegel it is not the case of “intermediacy” inside the cascade, but of “mediation”. A mediation absolute spirit has, for what? Precisely to enter into itself. Absolute spirit, in its concretion, is mediated with respect to itself; the way absolute spirit becomes absolute in its concretion is mediation, when passing through the mediation of the other, of the alienated. Thus, we have the fact that creation is dialectic of position, and dialectic of position in the end is dialectic of alienation, which in turn is essentially dialectic of mediation. The result is that absolute spirit with respect to creation does nothing but to enter into itself. It cannot enter into itself except from outside itself, and since there is nothing but itself, it means that the “other” is mediation issued by itself in order to be itself, something it could not be, Hegel says, if he had not created.
In this achieving to be itself is in what its own infinity consists. Creation is definitely the dialectic of the infinitude of absolute spirit. Of course, infinitude is initial; if the idea was not absolute, there would be no place for this process, but nevertheless, creation does contribute something, makes it enter into itself. Hegel would mention here what he said in the “Preface” to {300} Phenomenology of Spirit. The beginning, insofar as beginning, is resulting end, and in this cyclical characteristic is the occurrence in which the very entity of absolute spirit consists. The dialectic of infinitude is the very life of the idea; it is the very life of absolute spirit. If from the point of view of logic the whole metaphysics of Hegel is centered on the concept of idealism, in the sense that the ultimate reality is idea, the process of creation is resolved in the single term of pantheism, a term that must be explained. The identity between idealism and pantheism will be the key to the metaphysics of Hegel.
2. The stages of thinking activity
We now have to ask Hegel, in what does the dialectic stepping march of idea in its creative act consist? A creation that precisely by being mediation for the very absolute spirit, in not free at all because without that mediating creation, absolute spirit would not be absolute, would not enter into itself. Therefore, we now ask, what is the concrete structure of this dialectic of idea or absolute spirit in Hegel?
He clearly tells us, “The very idea shows itself to itself as a thought that is simply identical to itself and is, at the same time, an activity according to which, in order to be for itself, needs to be counterposed by placing something facing itself, and in that other placed in front, to enter into itself”1. With this, aside from the Logic that constitutes the first part of this explanation, the process of creation {301} is constituted incorporating two distinct elements. These are, the constitution of nature, which is precisely to be the other (Andersein), and the entry from that other into itself, which is the philosophy of spirit. It will be necessary for us to learn in two steps what Hegel understands by nature, and what he understands by finite spirit, and then finally learn how much of this reverts on absolute spirit.
A) Reason realized “outside of itself”. Nature.
We shall repeat many things, but Hegel is the essence of repetition. Nature is the idea in its being other; a wall, of course, is not formally divine reason or my reason, but Hegel will say that it is the idea, absolute spirit made into another, converted into another (Anders-sein). This means that everything we call exteriority or nature, so far, is dominated and constituted within the ambit of a télos that is nothing but absolute spirit, of whom nature is an internal position. Its being other is to be another within the télos and therefore, nature is resting over this télos, which the absolute spirit is and insofar as being another is in one form or another alienation and mediation.
But we must press Hegel to explain to us what he understands by nature, to avoid thinking that these vague statements may appear to constitute a deduction of what nature is. However, what is certain is that Hegel does not tell us much more, and we shall have to press his thought. That “being another” must be clarified along two lines of thought.
Hegel tells us, “The idea that is for itself, considered in this unity with itself that produces the other, is to intuit (Anschauen). The intuiting idea (die anschauende Idee) is nature2. {302} This may seem somewhat strange. What does intuition have to do with everything we have been saying up to now? Hegel does not limit himself to this, but says that this being other, which now is terminus of an intuition, formally consists in exteriority (Äusserlichkeit). It will be necessary for Hegel to explain to us what he means here by intuition and exteriority.
In the first place, intuition. It may seem quite strange that Hegel here uses the term intuition, but it will not seem so much if we remember that Hegel is operating under the weight of theological tradition. Classical theology had always distinguished in God two types of science or as the theologians say, two types of intellection. One is called simple intelligence, God when knowing himself, knows the infinitude of all things that might have had existence, which are possible in the divine mind. But of the things he has wished to create theology says that, at least from the point of view of the terminus of his activity, they are the object of a different science, what theologians call science of vision. This is precisely the intuition of Hegel, it is a videre, which by saying that nature is intuiting idea (anschauende Idee) is to say, in a phrase with idealist resonances, the same that classical theology has been saying with respect to creation, that it is terminus of scientia visionis. But this is not enough.
Someone may say that every intuition presupposes an intuited object, and this would appear to somewhat unravel everything Hegel has been saying up to now, which up to a certain point is true. Hegel now makes the concept of nature more precise and says that, “Nature is not only something relative to the idea of absolute spirit, but is also in itself an exteriority (Äusserlichkeit). And to be this is what constitutes the {303} determination according to which that which we call nature is nature”3. We now ask, what is this exteriority and what does that have to do with intuition or is Hegel manipulating concepts lightly? Not at all, Hegel is a rigorous man and his conceptivizing thinking never stops being such. To understand what this exteriority means we should recall what was said about intuition, it is an intuition in the sense that it is idea, absolute spirit, the absolute reason of God seeing. Seeing what? An object he has made? Definitely not, and here is where the problem begins. Nevertheless, the object of intuition has some kind of entity and that entity is what Hegel calls “”exteriority”. How is that exteriority conformed to the idea that it is a science that is a priori in the divine mind?
Hegel shows here the influence of the philosophy of Kant, who gave us an initial answer to this question. When Kant asks how we intuit things in the sensible world he tells us that every intuition has a moment in which we are given something, which is not from the one that receives it4. But in order for this to occur, so that the intuition may take place, it will be necessary for the intuiting structure of the human spirit to constitute a priori the form of time and space, i.e., to have a component he calls pure intuition. However, inasmuch as space (putting time aside for the moment) is space, it involves an exteriority of the object with respect to the subject and of the parts of space among themselves. Inasmuch as it is a priori, precisely the spirit “places” its unity. Space is a kind of intelligible matter placed a priori by the very spirit; here is {304} the exteriority of Hegel. Hegel, familiar with the Kantian concepts, understands that intuition places from itself the real multiplicity in which exteriority consists. With this, Hegel reassumes the totality of the facts of intuition —not only space— in this structural moment of the spirit by which the intuiting reason places multiplicity, places matter as something outside of spirit. This is just what Nature is.
This is why he tells us that nature can be considered from three points of view. In the first place, purely and simply insofar as it has this moment of exteriority of parts with respect to others (Auseinander) and in this sense nature is isolation (Vereinzelung), it is a system of these individuations, of these singuli. In second place, each one of these elements has an internal and special peculiarity, which is something more than mere singularity, it is individuality (Individualität), which would be for Hegel the object of physics, just as the first was the object of mechanics. In third place, we can consider isolation and the whole of determination as an activity that reverts upon itself and is nature as organism, the object of organic physics5. We are not interested now in analyzing the process of the structuring of nature, what is important is to outline how this concept of nature has been acquiring more precision in the mind of Hegel.
Throughout history nature has always been presented, as opposing something that is not natural. For example, in the Greek world nature is the substance that is provided with internal capabilities in order to have a mobility of its own, it is a phýsis, and in this sense, beings that have it are {305} phýsei ónta, natural beings. But the naturalness of these beings is at least extrinsically defined by their opposition to téchne, to beings man produces that do not enjoy that condition. For a Greek, what is going to become a house or any type of artificial object is the realization of an idea that is not in matter itself, but in the mind of the craftsman. Therefore, although this may be a reality it is not phýsei ón, but téchne ón, it is artificial. The natural is that which is not artificial, that which is born and sprouts from itself. Is this what Hegel understands by nature? Obviously not.
Hegel does not oppose nature to the fortuitous since he says that, actually, the fortuitous may occur. He then tells us it is necessity (Notwendigkeit), and in this he is an heir to Greek thought, because these chance occurrences that exist in the world are termini of anánke, a kind of fatum that necessarily falls on things. At any rate, the Hegelian concept of nature is not determined from laws, but by something different.
There has been a third concept of nature, older than the one from laws and posterior to the one of the Greek, by virtue of which nature has been understood as that total activity of the world by which all natural things are being produced. It is nature in the sense of natura naturans, different from the set of beings that would be natura naturata. In {306} this sense, nature in a certain way opposes God unless through a more complex theological reason God is turned into natura naturans. Nevertheless, there will be some difference between God and natura naturans, even though it may only be that God is not natura naturans unless he wants to be such. The concept of nature in Hegel is also not opposed to God here; much less opposed since in a certain way it is God himself; Spinoza had already said Deus sive natura. But Hegel is very much opposed to Spinoza and this complicates matters.
To what is the concept of nature in Hegel opposed? Hegel insists that nature is precisely exteriority, it is ex-teriority as such; here it is opposed to spirit, which as such is interiority whereby nature is formally conceived by opposition to spirit and that opposition is exteriority. It seems, then, there is a certain contradiction between this opposition to spirit and the thesis that there is no other reality except absolute spirit; but actually there is no opposition at all because that is the cyclic characteristic of reality in Hegelian thought. The resulting end is the beginning and beginning is the resulting end, because that real opposition to spirit is precisely from where the spirit enters into itself. Exteriority is the mere alienation of spirit.
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1 Enzyklopädie § 18 (This is a somewhat free translation by Zubiri).
2 Enzyklopädie § 244.
3 Enzyklopädie § 247.
4 [Tr. note: the Spanish reads “que no es el que lo recibe”, “which is not the one that receives it”. Since this makes no sense in the context, perhaps the Spanish should have been “que no es del que lo recibe”, which does fit the context.]
5 Cf. Enzyclopädie § 252.