3. See, for example, Michael Rosen, Hegel's Dialectic and Its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 174: "...Idealism's characteristic difficulty [is], namely, the need to give an account of the relationship between empirical and transcendental realms. The problem is resolved by Hegel's Absolute Idealism because the transcendental subject is, in fact, an absolute one, which itself generates the empirical. 'Transcendental and empirical, mind and nature, are not heterogeneous but emerge as 'moments' in a unified process; the problem of how one realm is 'constituted on' another is left behind when we operate in the element of Thought." Charles Taylor identifies Hegel as an absolute idealist and asserts that "Absolute idealism means that nothing exists which is not a manifestation of the Idea, that is, of rational necessity." See Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p.110.
R.G. Collingwood claims that Hegel has the "idealistic view of nature" which asserts "that mind makes nature: nature is, so to speak, a byproduct of the autonomous and self-existing activity of mind," The Idea of Nature (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), p.7. According to Errol Harris, nature is "an actual and substantial form of mind's self-manifestation"; "the philosopher of Nature ... sees Nature as implicit or potential mind." See The Spirit of Hegel, (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993), pp. 100, 133; also see pp.101 and 115. Also see Dieter Wandschneider, "Nature and Dialectic of Nature in Hegel's Objective Idealism," Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 26, (Autum-Winter 1992): 30-51. In Hcgel's Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Robert Pippin gives, but does not endorse, a good brief overview of Hegel as a metaphysical idealist. The reading I am presenting is not, however, Pippin's Kantian account of Hegel's idealism. (Return)
4. This piecemeal approach probably has its origins in Marx. Also see Taylor, Hegel, p. 538ff. Pippin discusses this view in Hegel's Idealism, pp.4-5, and also endorses it, pp.259-60. Karl Ameriks discusses it in "Recent Work on Hegel: The Rehabilitation of an Epistemologist," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52, 1 (March 1992): 177-202. (Return)
5. "Our procedure consists in first fixing the thought demanded by the necessity of the Notion and then in asking how this thought appears in our ordinary ideas," EN (1830), §254 Zus.; Miller, PN, p. 29. Hegel's views on the differences-and the relationship-between systematic philosophy and the empirical sciences are developed in detail in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia Logic. Philosophy "must necessarily be in harmony with actuality and experience" (EL [1830], §6; Wallace, EL, p.8), but this does not mean accepting experience as determinative, for even experience can distinguish "the mere appearance, which is transient and meaningless, from what in itself really deserves the name actuality" (EL [1830], §6; Wallace, EL, p.8), and "existence is in part mere experience, and only in part actuality" (EL [1830], §6; Wallace, EL, p.9). Philosophy "does not in the least neglect the empirical facts contained in the several sciences, but recognizes and adopts them: it appreciates and applies toward its own structure the universal element in these sciences, their laws and classifications, but besides all this into the categories of science it introduces, and gives currency to, other categories" (EL [1830], §9; Wallace, EL, p. 13). Philosophy "cannot, like them [the sciences], rest the existence of its objects on the natural admissions of consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of cognition, either for starting or continuing, is one already accepted"; "...philosophy will be satisfied with nothing short of showing the existence of its objects, as well as their nature and qualities. Our original acquaintance with them is thus discovered to be inadequate," (EL [1830], §1; Wallace, EL, p.3). In the Philosophy of Nature Hegel asserts "Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formulation of the Philosophy of Nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics. However, the course of a science's [the philosophy of nature's] origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science, here the foundation must be the necessity of the Notion," EN (1830), §246 Anm.; Miller, PN, p.6. See also EL (1830), §134 Zus.; Wallace, EL, p.190. (Return)
6. See EL (1830), §160 Zus.; Wallace, EL, p. 223, and Logik (Werke, 5), pp.172-3; Miller, Logic, pp. 154-5. On Logik (Werke, 5), p. 172; Miller, Logic, p. 155, Hegel asserts that idealism denotes the proposition that '(das Endtiche fist] nicht als em wahrhaft Seiendes anzuerkennen," "the finite is not to be acknowledged as truly existing." This is consistent with what I discuss as Hegel's critical idealism. See EL (1830), §§6, 142; Wallace, EL, pp.8-9, 201-2. (Return)
7. See especially EL (1830), § 6; Wallace, EL, pp.8-9, where Hegel makes clear that the fact that something exists and is apprehended does not mean that it is actual and true in the systematic meaning of these terms. (Return)
8. "These views on the relation of subject and object to each other express the determinations which constitute the nature of our ordinary, phenomenal consciousness; but when these prejudices are carried out into the sphere of reason as if the same relation obtained there, as if this relation were something true in its own self, then they are errors the refutation of which throughout every part of the spiritual and natural universe is philosophy, or rather, as they bar the entrance to philosophy, must be discarded at its portals"; "But the liberation from the opposition of consciousness which the science of logic must be able to presuppose lifts the determinations of thought above this timid, incomplete standpoint and demands that they be considered not with any such limitation and reference but as they are in their own proper character, as logic, as pure reason," Logik (Werke, 5), pp.37-8, 45, cf. p.43; Miller, Logic, pp.45, 51, cf. p.49. (Return)
9. Logik (Werke, 5), pp.66-9; Miller, Logic, pp.68-70. (Return)
10. For example, see EL (1830), §§6, 142 Zus.; Wallace, EL, pp.8-10, 201-2.(Return)
11. EN(1830), §246 Zus.; Miller, PN, pp.7-8. (Return)
12. See my essay, "Beginning," in Essays on Hegel's Logic, edited by George di Giovanni (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), pp.27-43. (Return)
13. Hegel rules out such appeals while recognizing that, in terms of its formulation, the Philosophy of Nature involves taking the results of the empirical sciences into account (see note 5). I will argue subsequently that nature's first determination as externality is immanently conceived, but that it can also be coordinated with the empirical representation of space. (Return)
14. EN(1830), §247; Miller, PN, pp.13-14. (Return)
15. See "Beginning." (Return)
16. In ruling out the latter option this interpretation is importantly different from Klaus Hartmann's non-metaphysical interpretation of Hegel ("Hegel: A Non-Metaphysical View," in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Alasdair Maclntyre [New York: Doubleday, 1972]), as well as those of his disciples such as Alan White Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1983]) and David Stem ("The Immanence of Thought: Hegel's Critique of Foundationalism," The Owl of Minerva 22, 1 [Fall 1990]: 19-33). (Return)
17. EN(1830), §§252-3; Miller, PN, pp.25, 28. (Return)
18. Conceiving externality systematically requires that externality be conceived as what it is in such a way that we think its determinacy as being itself constituted without determining reference to logic, to self-determination, just because systematic thought has shown that nature must be thought as being what it is in the complete absence of self-determination. Hegel is asking us to think what it means for nature to be determinate in its own right and not in virtue of some likeness with or some relation to thought. Nature is, after all, logic's radical other. Of course the activity of so conceiving nature involves a methodological reference to the already constituted domain of logical self-determination: it is only in virtue of this procedural demand that nature is thinkable immanently and as that domain in which logical determination does not take place. Only because we know what logical self-determination involves can we think a mode of determination which is not logical. But this methodological reference to logic (that "nature is the idea in the form of otherness") does not amount to the claim that logical determinacies are somehow or in some form present in nature as an actually apprehended given, as though Hegel was claiming that natural things "really are" just ideas. I quoted Hegel above as explicitly denying this and as indicating it as the pitfall he aims to avoid. While the concept of nature as a concept of systematic philosophy is constituted by thinking the idea in otherness, in thinking that we see that nature as a given is not in any way, shape, or form an idea or like an idea at all. (Return)
19. EN(1830), §254; Miller, PN, p.28. (Return)
20. Hegel specifically calls for this return in the addition to the last section (§ 244 Zus.; Wallace, p.296) of the Encyclopedia Logic: "We have now returned to the notion of the Idea with which we began. This return to the beginning is also an advance. We began with Being, abstract Being; where we now are we also have the Idea as Being; but the Idea which has Being is Nature." (Return)
21. "Philosophy misses an advantage enjoyed by the other sciences. It cannot like them rest the existence of its objects on the natural admissions of consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of cognition, either for starting or for continuing, is one already accepted," EL (1830), §1; Wallace, EL, p.3. According to Hegel, in the empirical sciences "the beginnings are in every case data and postulates, neither accounted for nor deduced" and thus "necessity fails to get its due," EL (1830), §9; Wallace, EL, p.13. (Return)
22. EN (1830), §250; Miller, PN, pp.22-3. (Return)
23. " ... Nature in its manifestations does not hold fast to the Notion. Its wealth of forms is an absence of definiteness and the play of contingency; the Notion is not to be based on them, rather it is they which are to be measured by the Notion," EN (1830), §341 Zus.; Miller, PN, p.299. (Return)
24. Philosophy "gives their [the empirical sciences'] contents what is so vital to them, the freedom of thought-gives them, in short, an a priori character. These contents are now warranted necessary, and no longer depend on the evidence of facts merely, that they were so found and so experienced. The fact as experienced thus becomes an illustration and a copy of the original and completely self-supporting activity of thought," EL (1830), §12 Anm.; Wallace, EL, p.18. (Return)
25. "The fact is, however, that the principal charge to be brought against physics is that it contains much more thought than it admits and is aware of... ," EN (1830), Einleitung, p.11; Miller, PN, p. 3. In this respect Hegel anticipates the contemporary philosophers of science T. S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. (Return)
26. "The dignity of science must not be held to consist in the comprehension and explanation of all the multiplicity of forms in Nature; we must be content with what we can, in fact, comprehend at present. There is plenty that cannot be comprehended yet; this is something we must grant in the Philosophy of Nature," EN (1830), §268 Zus.; Miller, PN, p.62. See also EN (1830), §354 Zus.; Miller, PN, p.359. (Return)
27. "The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material which physics has prepared for it empirically, at the point to which physics has brought it, and reconstitutes it, so that experience is not its final warrant and base. Physics must therefore work into the hands of philosophy, in order that the latter may translate into the Notion the abstract universal transmitted to it, by showing how this universal, as an intrinsically necessary whole, proceeds from the Notion," EN (1830), §246 Zus.; Miller, PN, p. 10. "Here, as throughout the whole of the Philosophy of Nature, all that we have to do is to substitute for the categories of the Understanding the thought-relationships of the speculative Notion, and to grasp and determine the phenomenon in terms of the latter," EN (1830), §305 Anm.; Miller, PN, p.154. (Return)
28. "For philosophy it is a matter of complete indifference which bodies manifest magnetism.... all this is no affair of the Notion,,, EN(1830), §312 Zus.; Miller, PN, pp.166-7. (Return)
29. EN(1830), §250 Anm.; Miller, PN, p.23. (Return)
30. EL (1830), §12 Anm.; Wallace, EL, p.18. (Return)
31. "In empirical science, any statement as to what color or heat etc., is, cannot be based on the Notion but must depend on their modes of origin. These modes are, however, extremely varied," EN (1830), §320 Anm.; Miller, PN, p.196. (Return)
32. Nancy Cartwright, How The Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). (Return)
33. EN (1830), §246; Miller, PN, p.6. (Return)
34. Space prevents a full exposition of this topic. Hegel deals with it, in his consideration of the theoretical and practical modes of cognition, both at the end of the logic (see the EL [1830], §§224 and 225; Wallace, EL, pp.283-4) and briefly, almost in passing, at the opening of the Philosophy of Nature (in the Einleitung, EN [1830], p.13; Miller, PN, p.4). (Return)
35. See EN (1830), §§248 Zus., 275 Zus.; Miller, PN, pp.18-19, 288. (Return)
36. EN(1830), §248; Miller) PN, p.17. (Return)
37. EN(1830), §249; Miller, PN, p.20. (Return)