Ludwig Feuerbach: Critique of “Anti-Hegel’s” for introduction in the study of philosophy (1835)

Reading the works of early Feuerbach incites a cozy feeling in a Hegel-connoisseur: it’s that instant recognition that you are talking with a person who really knows and understands his Hegel – a very rare experience when reading books on Hegel. The occasion of Feuerbach’s article I am now reading is the book Anti-Hegel by Carl Friedrich Bachmann, a former student and a later critic of Hegel’s. Feuerbach is not intrinsically against the idea of criticising Hegel – or indeed any philosophy – as long as the criticism is intrinsic to the kernel of that philosophy, just like, Feuerbach thinks, Plato was able to criticise Parmenides and Spinoza Descartes. What such intrinsic criticism achieves, according to Feuerbach, is to reveal the limitations of the criticised philosophy.

Bachmann’s criticism, Feuerbach insists, is not intrinsic in this sense, but based on mere misunderstandings. Such a negative criticism does not turn against the limitations, but the very philosophical core, replacing it with one’s own ideas. Thus, Feuerbach gives an example, Bachmann confuses the Hegelian notion of identity as unity between two seemingly different things with mere sameness involving no difference, so that when Hegel is e.g. speaking of the identity of logic and metaphysics, meaning that our knowledge is intrinsically connected with the world around it, Bachmann sees nothing but mere confusion of two separate disciplines.

The main target of Bachmann’s criticism, according to Feuerbach, is Hegel’s notion of idea, which Bachmann regards as meaning nothing but a universal concept or genus, although Hegel’s own examples of idea are topics like life, knowledge and will – organic and mental processes. Armed with his own reading, Bachmann goes on to insist that Hegel is inconsistent in saying that nature in its idea is divine, but still does not correspond to its concept. What Hegel means, Feuerbach explains, is simply that nature is a mere determined modification of this divine idea – an organic outgrowth, one might say – and as such a modification not the most perfect form in which this divine idea appears.

More generally, Feuerbach explains, every determined idea – say, that of family – comes with its own criteria for the perfection of its exemplifications, making it hence understandable how there can be e.g. bad families, which still are in a sense families. Adding another example, Feuerbach notes that we do not deny that the essence of humanity lies in reason, just because there happen to exist stupid people. Thus, unlike Bachmann insists, we need not first empirically study what all concrete families are like, in order to describe the idea of a family, but instead, the idea of family is something we use to evaluate individual families – of course, this idea is also embodied in concrete examples, but not in bad, but in good families. Despite the idea being embodied, Feuerbach adds, this sensuous embodiment is not really of interest in comparison with the idea: for instance, when looking at a true work of art, the most important thing in it is the idea of art shining through in this painting, statue or whatever.

In addition to the notion of idea, Bachmann criticises Hegel’s notion that the history of philosophy would form a development, where the latest specimen contained all its predecessors: instead, Bachmann insists, history of philosophy has been just a random appearance of opinions contradicting one another. Feuerbach notes that Bachmann has simply misunderstood the manner in which the earlier philosophies are contained in the later ones, because integration into a more intricate system requires modification of the details of the original. Taking as an example Kant, whom Bachmann considered as evidence for his own position, since Kant famously rejected all previous metaphysics, Feuerbach argues that you can instead find traces of several predecessors in Kant’s philosophy, including skepticism of David Hume and apriorism of Leibniz. Indeed, Feuerbach sees Bachmann’s misunderstanding as a further proof that the latter cannot remove himself from the realm of mere sensuousness, where e.g. water of Thales clearly differs from air of Anaximenes.

Bachmann uses the familiar phenomena of sleeping, diseases affecting our capacity to think etc. as a proof that what Hegel called spirit is actually of material nature. Feuerbach notes that Bachmann’s examples reveal more the difference between individual human beings, who do have their material side, and the spirit as the universally on-going process of thinking, which individual human beings struggle to come in contact with. True, human beings sleep without being conscious or thinking, Feuerbach admits, but never do they all sleep at the same time. Furthermore, he adds, what awakens consciousness in us is the stimulus provided by our fellow human beings, connecting us to the on-going flow of spirit or humanity. In the best cases, we as individuals are guided by this spirit or one of its ideas, such as the idea of art and beauty are guiding true artists.

Connected to this idea of humans being guided by ideas is Hegel’s (according to Feuerbach) metaphoric statement that his own Logic as the construction of such ideas or categories describes the thinking of God before creation of the concrete world. Bachmann makes fun of this notion by identifying God with various categories of Hegelian Logic. Feuerbach insists that Bachmann is simply confused: Hegel noted that only some categories could be predicated of God and he never drew the ridiculous conclusion that the physical copy of his Logic is the very God. Instead, Feuerbach notes, Hegel’s Logic is a mere reconstruction of divine self-consciousness for  the sake of individual human beings.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge – Speculative knowing

The result of his work, in Fichte’s opinion, has been that God is the absolute content of consciousness or its only truth and reality, or because we are talking actually of a system of knowing, the original ground of all truth: everything true is true for consciousness only because it follows from God’s revelation. Fichte calls this universal, inviolable standpoint speculative knowledge. Earlier subjectivity of consciousness should now have been completely overcome, and even the most confused, one-sided errors or the most contradictory worldviews are only insofar subjective and thus false as they are mere parts or moments of truth. Consciousness in all its forms and shapes is just more implicit or explicit knowing of the divine revelation. Thus, Fichte continues, what was earlier called the sense world or world of finite things is the same reality, surrounded and interwoven with sensuous illusion, and consciousness just has to work through this illusion in order to know in it the same one truth. Since all actual in general should be revelation of God, all disunion and dualism of any kind should have vanished. In addition to the opposition of thing and consciousness, Fichte says, things are not divided into sensuous and supersensuous realities, but there should be just one world of self-revealing God that is one as well as infinite.

The immediate recognition of eternal, Fichte notes, can be characterised only as an immediate confidence or faith. In other words, it is perception or intuition, since it is not found or discovered through any mediated knowing or reflection. Yet, he adds, it is not sensuous perception, but derives from pure thought or reason, that is, from the first original thought in which and through which every further determined thinking becomes possible. Because consciousness is at all stages and standpoints just undeveloped or developed thinking, Fichte’s argument continues, its absolute, even if not consciously recognised essence is at the same time to recognise eternal, infinite or divine. Fichte immediately draws the conclusion that any purely atheistic worldview would be only highest unconsciousness, or at best, in trying to understand this original intuition of the eternal it remained with such unsatisfying abstractions like natural necessity and unconscious fate. Intuition of reason is then just a beginning leading to the truth, because divine is to be comprehended according to more special determinations than mere abstract infinity.

Fichte clarifies that although the intuition of reason is original and absolute, it cannot be called immediate, because it is mediated by the previous stages of reflection, through which consciousness arrived at it. This mediation should justify and prove the possibility of the intuition of reason for philosophy that starts from other standpoints. Still, the content of this intuition is not invented through reflective consciousness, but consciousness has just returned from its engagement with various individual instances of knowing and illuminated the original knowledge and truth behind these individual truths.

The intuition of reason, Fichte explains, does not immediately have any determined content expressible as propositions or as a system of truths. Instead, it is just a beginning or a principle for further speculative progress. This intuition must then be extended from its simple abstraction to mediated comprehending of all truth as an absolute revealing itself in consciousness. The next question, Fichte notes, is  how this absolute is to be comprehended, since its abstract understanding as eternal or infinite seems too sparse to exhaust its concept. He reveals that religious mysticism and church faith have anticipated this development, when they have expressed God as the highest personality or as the conscious original good. According to Fichte, this religious notion has to be just confirmed in philosophical thinking.

More definitely, Fichte continues, unsatisfactory in the knowledge of absolute or God at this standpoint is that the intuition of reason has not been balanced with the consciousness of immediately given, and this imbalance drives us to speculative investigation. In other words, Fichte expounds, intuition of reason shows God alone as undeniable truth, but in immediate consciousness this confidence is replaced by finite, variable things: consciousness of eternal and consciousness of finite fall completely apart. Eternal appears to become a beyond for finite, which on its part is immediately certain, and thus a struggle is created between the absolute confidence of knowing God and the immediate consciousness of merely finite beings. The original certainty of eternal is driven to test and justify itself, Fichte continues, in other words, the eternal becomes a topic of investigation and at least a theoretical uncertainty. Thus, the immediate confidence of God, Fichte insists, turns into Jacobian yearning for eternal as unknown.

Finite is just an illusion, Fichte ensures us, but we still must explain the appearance of finite from eternal, which requires developing one concept from the other through thinking. Since these are pure concepts, that is, not abstracted from concrete intuitions, this investigation can happen only in speculative or dialectical thinking. Fichte notes beforehand that the investigation breaks into three phases. First, the eternal must be comprehended as such, and secondly, the finite must be derived from this comprehension of eternal: this will be the content of ontology. Thirdly, the essence of the finite must then be further determined, which will then be content of the philosophy of nature and spirit. Despite dividing it into these three parts, Fichte assures us, the whole investigation is dialectical development of one fundamental concept of self-revelation of God in consciousness.

At the stage of speculative thinking, Fichte says, the previous opposition between subjective and objective has not just been cancelled, but the concept of objectivity has received a higher meaning: objective is just divine revelation in consciousness and thus not a world opposed and impassable to knowledge. Consciousness and objective being are at this standpoint not identical, Fichte emphasises, since there is still some difference between them, but they do correspond to one another. Consciousness, just because it is consciousness, takes simply part in objectively real or lives in truth. It should thus know the essence of the finite things as they are in God, which Fichte compares to Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge.

The first manner in which speculative thinking understands God or absolute, Fichte begins, is to note that all the oppositions of finite thinking have vanished and are without meaning in it: absolute is the abstract indifference to oppositions. Yet, Fichte continues, this is not the whole truth, since the absolute also determines these opposites and is thus their underlying identity, like in the early Schellingian philosophy. Even further, the absolute is not just a passive identity, but it is an absolute process that in its identity determines itself to oppositions or differences, but again cancels and returns all these oppositions and differences in itself as mere moments: in other words, Fichte notes, it is the Hegelian self-related negation.

Fichte follows the lead of Hegel in emphasising the role of contradiction. Contradictions, Fichte says, were generated in incomplete forms of thinking by fixating on isolated categories, while here these must be developed from the concept of the absolute identity. In this development, the categories must be shown as moments that have their truth only in the final category, in which all earlier categories converge as their common result. This final category, Fichte concludes, will be the correct, contradictionless standpoint of the whole truth, which will itself be this dialectics that again and again complements itself from its individual contradictions and one-sided oppositions and reinstates them into reconciled contradictions that alone are the result and the truth.

Categories receive in this dialectical process a new, higher meaning, Fichte thinks, where they are original forms of the divine self-revelation. Fichte emphasises against Hegelian school that universals are actual only in their individuality as concrete, while universal as such is to be understood as untrue and one-sided. Thus, the categories, according to Fichte, are merely the most external and formal abstractions that are actual only in individuals, but are nothing in themselves. Hence, even the poorest and most imperfect of natural entities are infinitely richer than abstract categories. Indeed, Fichte points out, the very dialectical process of thinking categories shows how these abstractions are cancelled and lead to concrete actuality as their truth. We shall see this process in more detail when dealing with Fichte’s ontology, but he already reveals that one important result of this process will be that self-conscious personality is the most real feature in both God and in creatures. Fichte also emphasises against Hegel that this whole development of categories through contradictions does not mean that reality itself would be governed by contradiction, but the contradictory categories refer merely to incomplete philosophical standpoints about the absolute or God and its relation to creatures. Fichte especially objects to the idea he thinks Hegel had in mind with the notion of contradiction that divinity is nothing but destruction of finite entities: instead, the seemingly finite or imperfect entities are supported by divinity.

Even this standpoint of dialectical thinking is still the one-sided, Fichte notes: speculative thinking still stands opposed to previous states of consciousness, like perceiving and representing. As long as speculative knowing grasps itself as the only form of truth, the disunion in consciousness and opposition between a priori and a posteriori remains in full force. Thus, the final task, Fichte insists, is to collect all the previous moments of consciousness under speculative thinking: consciousness has known itself in all forms, not just as speculative thinking, as being in truth or as revelation of God. In other words, consciousness has always dealt with just one world and reality that remains present at all stages of its development. Therefore even immediate consciousness or perception immediately grasps the actuality of this revelation in its absolute presence, and just like there is one world or divine revelation that is all, similarly there is only one knowing of it in both perception and in thinking, which both complement one another.

Fichte calls this highest form of consciousness speculatively intuiting or perceiving knowing. Here intuition or perception is required to emphasise the importance of individuation that speculative thinking forgets, when it fixates on pure concepts. Thus, Fichte insists, perception as such lives already in truth, as long as it is not ruined by one-sided thinking. When this harmony between perception and speculative thinking is understood, God is not anymore just a yearned beyond, but omnipresent, originally certain truth, because it reveals itself in all consciousness infinitely. Furthermore, Fichte continues, God is known not just as abstract omnipresence, but as original personality, whereby its creation does not remain an absolute process of creating and then destroying individuals. Instead, Fichte suggests, the created universe is the actualisation of infinitely individualised thoughts of God or of one original thought developed into a system. This creative thought of God, Fichte explains, does not create mere abstract universal concepts, as if the spirit of God would be so poor that it thought only abstractions, but infinitely concrete individuals.

As the universe should be the effect of divine thought, Fichte continues, we knowing the universe become conscious of it by thinking about it afterwards (pun on German word Nachdenken, meaning contemplation, but literally thinking afterwards), just like God has thought it previously or originally. In other words, we know the essence of ourselves and other things only insofar as we take part in the original knowledge, through which all is: we as subjects can reach objective things, because they are not dead beings or chaotically obscure, but divine thoughts.

Philosophy has finally become, Fichte concludes, theosophy or knowledge of divine in its works, but it does not possess this content exclusively, because consciousness is in all moments only knowing this infinite self-revelation of God. The final opposition between a priori and a posteriori therefore vanishes. True knowing in both perception and thinking is not opposed to any dead object that would remain absolutely unknown, but is essentially the immanent genesis of what is to be known. In other words, like speculative thinking is dialectical unfolding of pure concepts, the correct experience is also the genetic perception or living through and developing an object through its whole course of life and its connections to other things. Such a genetic perception does not reveal just an individual, but the universal or eternal in this individual, thus complementing speculative thinking. After philosophy has completed its immanent course through pure concept, it finally is reconciled with itself and turns back to the perception of immediate actuality in order to recognise in it the presence of divine revelation, with which it is to infinitely rejuvenate itsef.