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| (1784–1861) |
An example of the Right Hegelianism is provided by Göschel’s Der Monismus des Gedankens, which is a perfect example of an interpreter reading more into a philosopher’s texts than could be gleaned from the text itself. The occasion for Göschel’s text is provided by Christian Hermann Weisse, whose Hegel-inspired book on aesthetics we have considered. Weisse did not even present himself as a pure Hegelian, but wanted to improve Hegel’s philosophy, while Göschel then suggests he wants to defend Hegel against this perceived attack.
Since we have dealt only with a part of Weisse’s suggested improvement, I will go through it in a summarised fashion. Firstly, he had said that he didn’t want to remove anything from Hegel’s logic, but thought it had to be supplemented in a fashion. Logic, Weisse had said, was a science of necessity, so all necessities should be handled in it. Thus, he continued, the final chapter of the logic had to still contain another trivision: logical method, as an undivided continuum of all the previous structures of logic, should be transformed into a differentiated space, which would then be transformed further, through connecting these differentiations into a new process or time.
Now, speaking as a Hegel-scholar, I see nothing to object in the process of developing space and time out of the logical method, as presented by Weisse, since this is in fact how Hegel himself does it. What is against Hegel’s intentions is only the grouping of space and time within logic, on the pretext that logic is somehow a science of necessities, compared with other parts of his philosophy, which should be sciences of freedom, according to Weisse. In other words, what Weisse is saying is that while logic describes what must be, the later parts of Hegel’s philosophy should describe only what exists, because of the free choice of God.
The problem is that Weisse’s notion of necessity is very different from the manner in which Hegel understands the word: of course, Weisse is really using the ordinary notion of necessity, so the confusion is understandable. For Hegel, necessity means in a sense the necessity of connections, in the sense that it is necessarily possible to move from what is described in an earlier part of his philosophy to what is described in a later part. Thus, for instance, once one has discovered the logical method, one can then divide the moments of the method and so form a sort of mental space of them. Of course, since such a necessarily existing possible connection need not still be used – we can freely choose whether to think space after the logical method – this necessity does not in any manner hinder our freedom. Then again, this duality of necessity and freedom occurs in all parts of Hegel’s philosophy and even in logic. What is novel in the further parts of Hegel’s philosophy, as opposed to his logic, is that one can then also find dedicated empirical counterparts for such logical models or concepts discovered through these connections – for example, the experienced, geometrical space.
What Weisse had considered as a necessary outcome of his emphasis on the difference of necessity and freedom is that the next part of Hegel’s philosophy – the philosophy of nature, should have begun with matter, which is something that does not necessarily exist, but is created by God. As something freely created, Weisse had added, matter is something of more worth than mere thinking, and in addition, something thinking can never completely penetrate. Of course, the truly Hegelian counterpoint would be to point out that all Hegel needs is to show that a model of space and time is necessarily connected to a model of matter – something moving within space and time – in the sense that we can, as it were, construct the latter model from the former. This connection of models is then in a sense reinforced by Hegel’s conviction that empirical space and time are nothing but ephemeral sets of relations that could not empirically exist without anything having those relations (that is, matter we can empirically observe). Furthermore, there would then be no question of not understanding what matter is, since the construction of its model just would be this required understanding.
From matter, Weisse had jumped straight to spirit, noting that like nature, spirit must also be something that is not describable by mere logical categories, but also something freely created by God. We probably need not repeat the basic fault in Weisse’s reading, but just in case let’s do it: jump from nature to spirit does not say that spirit would be somehow necessary, but only that a) given a model of nature (a realm of disparate entities), we can move to a model of spirit (a self-regulating process using these entities consciously for its own purposes) and b) empirically natural processes can in some measure be controlled by such a conscious self-regulating process.
Within Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, Weisse had ignored the so-called subjective spirit, mostly because he wanted to concentrate on both objective and absolute spirit, instead. Weisse had envisioned the realm of objective spirit to be divided into parts on language – which Hegel studied in the division on subjective spirit – on state – which Weisse apparently thought to contain almost all of what Hegel had studied in his philosophy of right – and finally, on world history – which for Hegel was only a final part of a study on state. From this short summary it is difficult to judge what Weisse really meant with this division, and the analogy he gives is not that much more helpful: language being like mechanism (perhaps because speaking persons are still independent of one another?), state like chemism (perhaps because persons unite into communities?), and finally, world history like teleology (perhaps because it is supposed to be a process with an end?).
Weisse’s theory of absolute spirit we are already very familiar with. He had begun with truth or science as life of spirit, then proceeded to beauty and art as spirit’s cognition of the external world and finally ended with divinity or religion as the most absolute phase of spirit. I have discussed this part of Weisse’s system (or more particularly, the second division of beauty) in more detail earlier, so I’ll overlook it here.
As for Göschel's critique of Weisse, he clearly knows the Hegelian liturgy, since he can at the right places state some key phrases loved by many followers of Hegel. Thus, when Weisse criticises Hegel of formalism, Göschel can at once point out that Hegel's philosophy is just the opposite of formalism, avoiding mere application of all external schemas. He connects this point at once with the idea that the universal beginning of Hegel’s philosophy particularises itself, thus becoming more determined with its development. Weisse’s supposed improvement, Göschel says, is on the contrary dualist, because it assumes something beyond logical method – content – which the method has to grapple with. All this liturgy has a proper Hegelian meaning – thinking is, for Hegel, an activity that can create content even when nothing else is given and can thus be used to model anything in the empirical world - but it is unclear how Göschel understood these words.
This unclarity becomes clear when we see how Göschel wants to solve the dilemma of necessity and freedom that led Weisse to improve the Hegelian philosophy. Göschel says explicitly that the thinking we follow throughout the Hegelian philosophy is not human, but divine thought – or at least it would be that, if this system could repeat exactly all the intricacies of the world around us. Thus, he says, the world around us is the creation of divine thought and therefore necessary, but there is much that seems contingent for us as mere humans. This is, of course, completely against the spirit of Hegelian philosophy, where the idea of necessary contingency is explicitly endorsed and no divine viewpoint outside the human viewpoint is accepted.
Göschel, on the other hand, is clearly committed to the Christian notion of God. Hence, while he recognises that Hegelian philosophy just begins, from nothing, he at once adds that beginning differs from beginner, thus, that it is God doing this beginning. This does not mean, he explains, that we should begin from God, since then we could never move away from God, which would drive us to pantheism. Similarly, he adds, we should not start from unconscious nature, consciousness or both together, since these beginnings would lead us, respectively, to realism, idealism and dualism.
A further example of Göschel’s tendencies is his choice of example for the supposed cyclical nature of Hegel’s philosophy, where the beginning and end should coincide. This example is the incarnated God that, Göschel says, is both the basis of true human cognition – because according to him, we would know nothing without Christ – but also the end of all human cognition. Thus, moving toward Christ, Göschel says, a person moves, on the one hand, to their beginning, but also to their end.
Göschel moves on to consider the specifics of Weisse’s reimagination of the Hegelian system. Beginning from Weisse’s derivation of method, space and time, Göschel notes quickly – and quite correctly – that actually these three are implicitly present much earlier in the development of Hegelian philosophy than Weisse thinks. Indeed, method is, of course, used through Hegel’s logic, and furthermore, abstract spaces and “times” or processes have appeared almost from the beginning of the logic (i.e. when Hegel starts by pointing out that thinking nothing begins a process – or becoming, as he calls it – which results in a construction of a space of qualities), and the later philosophy of nature really adds just the discovery of empirical counterparts for both of them.
Just like space and time, Göschel says, so is matter to be found already in Hegel’s logic, even if Weisse thought it was something unique to philosophy of nature. Indeed, the move from space and time to something that is spatial and temporal is similar to many moves in Hegel’s logic, where he moves from the thinking of e.g. existence to the thinking of something existent. As Göschel points out, we do a similar movement in our ordinary thought, when we introduce the notion of matter – we perceive something and then decide something or matter must be the basis of these perceptions. In fact, he continues, matter just is a hypothesis of thought and not something thought couldn’t understand. Göschel also suggests that while Weisse saw matter and even whole nature as inimical to thought, nature in its innermost essence really is at least an analogy to spirit – in other words, it is not just a passive receptacle, but an active striving toward self-organisation and even self-knowing. Therefore, it is just natural that matter will next give rise to motion.
Although Göschel at first appears to understand the introduction of matter in a manner faithful to Hegel, he then adds the un-Hegelian point that we should also investigate the genesis of matter or of nature in general, or in the more poetic terms he uses, how the water of thought solidifies into the ice of matter. Hegel really isn’t interested in the question of how things have temporally begun, especially in the case of nature – philosophy, for him, deals with what is present. Göschel, on the other hand, explicitly answers this question by saying that it must have been absolute spirit – in essence, God – that has created matter.
From matter, Göschel jumps straight to the end of Hegel’s philosophy of nature, that is, to living organisms, which are the most spiritlike forms nature can produce. In other words, while the realm of nature, Göschel says, differentiates and solidifies the moments of the fluid process of thought, its forms become more and more unified, in the sense that in the more complex forms and especially in organisms their parts are less and less independent of one another. Yet, even organisms are still no spirits. Göschel, following Hegel, suggests that we could thus call the whole nature sick in the sense that it always dissatisfies the demand of becoming spirit.
Since Weisse ignored the first part of Hegel’s philosophy of spirit – the so-called subjective spirit – Göschel does not say much about it, but he does reprimand Weisse for not taking it seriously. Subjective spirit should be the first step away from nature and still partially linked with nature, and because this necessary first step is missing, Göschel insists, Weisse’s account of objective spirit appears to lack objectivity, which it then has to find beyond thought. It is for this reason, Göschel suggests, that Weisse considers human community or state to be mere means to an end – the world history. On the other hand, Göschel, following Hegel, thinks that world history is just the highest shape of the human community – the court of the whole world.
More sympathetically Göschel relates to Weisse’s idea that language is part of the objective spirit, while Hegel had restricted it to the subjective spirit. In fact, Göschel thinks that logic already as pure thought is some type of language, as the etymology suggests (logos meaning word). Subjective spirit, then, is the place where language is generated, Göschel continues, but objective spirit does have its own language, and the deepest shape of language can be found in absolute spirit, and more particularly, in art.
It is no wonder that Göschel finds Weisse’s account of absolute spirit very wanting, since it is based on the very idea that philosophy and thought is not enough and that there’s something more to be found beyond it. Göschel himself, on the other hand, suggests another way to amend the end of Hegel’s philosophy. In a rather formalistic manner – and in a manner followed by many Hegel-interpreters after him – Göschel takes a bit too seriously the trivisions of Hegelian philosophy and tries to correct Hegel by suggesting a better trivision, thinking he has thus made considerable progress. Thus, while logic is for Göschel the natural first point of the system, the second point should not be the philosophy of nature, but the whole philosophy of creation, dealing with nature (passive beginning), soul (separation of something active from nature) and human spirit (free activity). The third point, then, would be theology, as the study of God. Although he does not explicate this idea more closely, it clearly appears opposed to basic ideas of Hegel’s philosophy – God is not just something completely removed from creation and especially from human life, but merely one form of human existence.
