The ‘Release’ of the Absolute Idea

Hegel’s Science of Logic is therefore meant to present the fundamental determinations of being as an immanent explication of being’s rational structure. It is only through this logical movement that we come to learn, at the end of the Logic, that being does not, in fact, ‘have’ a rational structure, but is nothing less than self-determining reason itself, what Hegel calls ‘the absoluteIdea’. But Hegel’s system does not end here, with the concluding chapter of the

Logic. For logic only comprises the first part of Hegel’s tripartite system. The latter two parts are the philosophies of nature and spirit, which together constitute the ‘real’ counterpart to the ‘ideal’ logic. This distinction between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’ parts of Hegel’s system is perhaps one reason why critics have taken Hegel’s Logic to be about something ‘detached’ from actual being, a system of ‘mere thought’ and not a system of

W 8: Vorbegriff, § 24, 81; Encyclopaedia Logic, p. 56.

being itself. But never in German idealist philosophy does the term ‘ideal’ signify a lack of

actuality (Wirklichkeit). Something else, therefore, must be at work in the distinction between ideal logic, on the one hand, and the Realphilosophie on the other.

The difference between the ideal and real is better understood as a difference of ‘degree’, and more specifically, degree of ontological determinacy. Logic, for its part, unpacks the more abstract features of being, while the philosophies of nature and spirit unpack the more concrete features of being. In other words, the Logic presents the necessary determinations of being in abstraction from the reality in which those determinations are found. Logic is therefore ontology, but not an ontology of the most concrete forms of being; it is an ontology of the ‘bare essentials’. What makes Hegel’s system unique, however, is 64

not that it contains an account of the ‘bare essentials’ of being, but that the system begins with this abstract logic and only accumulates concreteness throughan immanent, dialectical development of those ‘bare essentials’. This is why the ontological determinations found in the logic are not, from a methodological perspective, abstracted away from concrete reality; on the contrary, reality—in all its concreteness—is shown to be the logical consequence of pure reason! 65

The systematic transition from logic to the philosophy of nature is meant to capture this logical necessity which brings us from the abstract ontology of the Logic to the concrete ontology of the Realphilosophie. It is without a doubt one of the most difficult and frustrating transitions in Hegel’s system for both critics and proponents of Hegel’s thought. In this transition, reason ‘lets go’ of (entläßt) its purity or abstractness and thereby lets itself go into concreteness. We have already seen one sense in which this is the case, namely, insofar as nature is ‘irrational’ and rife with contingency. In this way, reason has ‘loosened up’ as it were, allowing for a rational progression of ontological determinations to proceed

‘The system of logic is the realm of shadows, the world of simple essentialities [einfachen Wesenheiten]

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freed from all sensuous concreteness’ (W 5: 55; Science of Logic [Miller], p. 58).

Hegel is fully aware of how counterintuitive this appears: ‘When contrasted with the wealth of the world as

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pictorially conceived, with the apparently real content of the other sciences, and compared with the promise of absolute science to unveil the essential being of this wealth, the inner nature of mind and the world, the truth, then this science in its abstract shape, in the colourless, cold simplicity of its pure determinations looks as if it could achieve anything sooner than the fulfilment of its promise and seems to confront that richness as an empty, insubstantial form’ (W 5: 54; Science of Logic [Miller], pp. 57-58).

beyond the bounds of pure reason and into the domain of nature. But we misunderstand the significance of this transition if we interpret it as a transition from reason to an irrational nature. For nature is in no straightforward sense the other of reason. Nature, rather, is reason

itself in its ‘self-external being’ (Außersichsein). This is how Hegel describes nature in the Introduction to the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature:

Nature has presented itself as the Idea in the form of otherness. Since therefore the Idea is the negative of itself, or is external to itself, Nature is not merely external in relation to this Idea […] the truth is rather that externality

constitutes the specific character in which Nature, as Nature, exists. 66

In order to make sense of this passage, we need to consider the transition from logic to nature in some detail.

The first thing we must keep in mind is that the transition from logic to nature is not a historical occurrence, as if logic ‘became’ nature in time. We must rule out this idea for the simple reason that the transitions in Hegel’s system describe logical transitions, even in the philosophy of nature (more on this below). Moreover, space and time are the primary ontological determinations of nature’s self-external being, and it would therefore be incomprehensible, according to Hegel, were space and time to be generated in time. 67

The transition from the Idea to nature is not, therefore, an actual, historical event. There is good reason, however, for one to represent the passage from logic to nature in this manner. While such thinking is not philosophical, set in the right context it can nonetheless help to paint a picture of what is in truth a strictly onto-logical feature of being, namely, the atemporal accumulation of concreteness. The sphere of human thinking that does this kind of image-thinking best, according to Hegel, is religion, and Hegel himself relies heavily upon theological language in order to flesh out the conceptual transition from logic to nature:

If God is all self-sufficient and lacks nothing, why does He disclose Himself in a sheer Other of Himself? The divine Idea is just this: to disclose itself, to posit this Other outside itself and to take it back again into itself, in order to W 9: § 247, 24; Philosophy of Nature, pp. 13-14.

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W 9: Addition to § 247, 26-27; Philosophy of Nature, pp. 15-16.

be subjectivity and Spirit […] God, therefore, in determining Himself, remains equal to Himself; each of these moments is itself the whole Idea and must be posited as the divine totality.68

Throughout the Encyclopaedia, Hegel describes the relationship between logic, nature, and spirit in terms of this divine, processual totality. The Christian God is truly divine only insofar as He is triune, and Hegel understands the Trinity as a process of God’s self- externalisation (Entäußerung) and return-to-self. In both of these moments, revelation is inseparable from God’s being. Indeed, Hegel goes so far as to say that ‘revelation [Offenbarung], manifestation [Manifestation] is itself [the Christian religion’s] character and content.’ 69

Insofar as the Holy Trinity corresponds to the three parts of Hegel’s system, Hegel’s interpretation of the relationship between God and his creation sheds light on his conception of the relationship between logic and nature. God is, according to Hegel, utterly self- sufficient, and yet he must necessarily create a world; indeed, God cannot be the truly divine being he is unless he ‘empties himself out’ into existence and subsequently returns to himself in the life of the Christian community (the Holy Spirit). That God is only truly divine insofar as he differs from himself in creation is the central ‘paradox’ of both Hegel’s interpretation of the Trinity and his conception of the logic-nature relationship. But for Hegel, such a logic is only paradoxical if one presupposes that an absolutely free and self- sufficient being should remain shut up within itself, ‘absolute’ in distinction from anything ‘other’. Such a presupposition leads both religious and philosophical consciousness astray. For if God remained within Himself and never revealed Himself (as a world and in the world), then God would lack truly infinite being. Indeed, the true infinite for Hegel is not an infinite above and beyond the finite, but the ontological process whereby finitude comes to be united with its other and thereby achieves unbounded (and yet fully differentiated) presence-to-self. 70

W 9: Addition to § 247, 24; Philosophy of Nature, p. 14.

68

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion:Volume III, p. 63.

69

W 5: 163-164; Science of Logic (Miller), pp. 148-149.

Thus, according to Hegel, the absolute cannot be truly absolute unless it lets itself go into otherness. This is the philosophical truth behind the image of God’s Entäußerung: reason necessarily makes itself manifest as a world. ‘The divine Idea is just this: to disclose itself.’ Note, however, this initial moment of revelation or disclosure is one in which God 71

reveals himself as other than himself. ‘God is only manifest as one who particularizes himself and becomes objective, initially in the mode of finitude.’ Prior to becoming fully 72

divine in the life of the Holy Spirit, God creates a world and does not remain outside this creation but become creaturely himself, namely, in Christ. That God 73 initially reveals himself in the mode of finitude is significant, for this corresponds, in the conceptual realm, to the externalisation of the Idea as nature, i.e. as an irrational manifestation of reason.

Now, for Hegel, the theological narratives of genesis and incarnation are representational and, as such, do not correspond to actual, historical events. Rather, such images tell a story that intimates what is going on within the rational structure of being. Thus, the manifestation of the Idea does not ‘take place’, but is rather an eternal ‘occurrence’ or, more precisely, an atemporal feature of being: the Idea must be manifest, finite, and

carnal in order for it to be the truly absolute being that it is. The Idea does not, therefore,

become natural in any historical sense, but the Idea is logically required to be nature. Thus, just as God necessarily reveals himself through an act of creation, so too the absolute Idea must necessarily present itself in the form of otherness. This does not simply mean that there must be a natural world, but that the Idea itself must manifest itself as nature. As Hegel says, nature is ‘the Idea as being,’ ‘the Idea that is’. 74

The pantheistic necessity at work in the transition from logic to nature should not, however, be taken to signify any lack of freedom on the part of the Idea. For just as God’s

W 9: Addition to § 247, 24; Philosophy of Nature, p. 14.

71

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion:Volume III, p. 63.

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‘The appearance of God in nature [occurs as]: (α) nature, (β) the Son of Man’ (Lectures on the Philosophy of

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Religion:Volume III, p. 77).

W 8: Addition to § 244, 393; Encyclopaedia Logic, p. 307. My emphasis. The full passage reads: ‘We have

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now returned to the Concept of the Idea with which we began [at the beginning of the Logic]. At the same time this return to the beginning is an advance. What we began with was being, abstract being, while now we have the Idea as being; and this Idea that is, is Nature.’

Entäußerung is a free act, ‘the Idea freely releases itself in its absolute self-assurance and inner poise’ into ‘the externality of space and time’. Indeed, the necessity at the heart of the 75

Idea’s manifestation is owed entirely to the freedom and ‘inner resolve’ of the absolute Idea itself.

Few readers of Hegel have been enthusiastic about his conception of the Idea’s ‘inner resolve’ to ‘freely release itself’ into nature. For his part, the late Schelling found these passages in Hegel’s Logic ambiguous at best. In the Munich lectures of the 1830s, Schelling asks how we should understand the transition from logic to nature in Hegel’s system:

‘The Idea’, says Hegel…the Idea in the infinite freedom, in the ‘truth of itself,

resolves to release itself as nature, or in the form of being-other, from itself’. This expression ‘release’ – the Idea releases nature – is one of the strangest, most ambiguous and thus also timid expressions behind which this philosophy retreats at difficult points. Jacob Böhme says: divine freedom vomits itself into nature. Hegel says: divine freedom releases nature. What is one to think in this notion of releasing? 76

And in his later Berlin lectures Schelling continues his assault:

[Hegel] helps himself to such expressions—for example, the idea resolves

itself [entschliesst sich]; nature is a fall [Abfall] from the idea—that either say nothing, or…should be explanatory and thus include something real, an actual process, a happening. 77

According to the late Schelling, there are two ways of understanding notions such as the ‘free release of the Idea’: Either they describe nothing at all and are, therefore, philosophically insignificant; or they explain the real, historical event of genesis, such that the idea actually releases itself into the exteriority of space and time—or what is the same thing, a transcendent God literally empties himself out into the world in an historical act of creation. Thus, on the late Schelling’s view, the category of ‘self-release’ should describe an

W 6: 573; Science of Logic (Miller), p. 843. Emphasis modified.

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SW I/10: 153; On the History of Modern Philosophy, pp. 154-155. At this stage in Schelling’s intellectual

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development, he has distanced himself from Boehme’s theosophy, although he continues to have far more appreciation for Boehme’s ideas than he does for Hegel. On Schelling’s view, Boehme’s failures are largely due to his lack of philosophical rigour, whereas Hegel exemplifies all the rigour required of philosophy and yet still ‘says nothing’ with his metaphorical language.

SW II/3: 89; Grounding of Positive Philosophy, p. 151.

actual, historical creation if it is to explain anything at all. And since the ‘release’ of the Idea is absolutely not an historical event for Hegel, Schelling tells us that this ‘astounding category of the release [Entlassens]’ can be nothing other than a ‘figurative expression.’ 78

In rejecting the Idea’s self-release as figurative, the late Schelling gets to the heart of the peculiarity of the transition to nature in Hegel’s system. But on my view, we need not denounce Hegel for this employment of figurative language. What if, when we turn to the concrete existence of nature, speculative thought cannot help but generate imagistic concepts? For Boehme, God vomits himself into nature; for Hegel, the idea freely releases itself into externality. Schelling’s own Ages of the World, as it happens, describes ‘God self- referentially [fürsichtig] shroud[ing] the point of departure for the past beginning in dark night.’ We might acknowledge the figurative language in these descriptions of ideational 79

manifestation, and yet we need not follow the late Schelling’s assessment of such language as non-explanatory. On the contrary, it may be the case that the figurative nature of these phrases speaks preciselyto the extra-logical character of nature itself.

My suggestion is that, even if Hegel is using imagistic language here, this is absolutely consistent with how he understands the transition from logic to nature, so long as the figurative or imagistic language he employs is demanded by reason itself. For the 80

‘release’ is meant to describe the transition from pure logic to concrete logic, where philosophy must begin to incorporate aspects of knowledge that are externalto abstract logic (e.g. knowledge attained in the history of science, religion, and philosophy, all of which, it should be said, will have been moments within a strictly logical development). The transition from logic to nature therefore reveals the logical necessity of the extra-logical, the irreducible fact that despite its rational organisation, the natural world is alien to pure logic for Hegel. As I see it, then, Hegel’s use of the figurative category of the ‘release’ draws our attention to the necessity for conceptual thought to move outwards towards another manner

SW II/3: 121-122; Grounding of Positive Philosophy, p. 175.

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SW I/8: 207; Ages of the World (1815), p. 3.

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Indeed, such figurative or metaphorical expressions might be interpreted as announcing the ‘mythology of

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reason’ promised in the ‘Earliest System-Program of German Idealism’ (W 1: 236; ‘Earliest System-Program’, p. 111).

of thinking. For the ‘free release’ is a concept which is no longer a fully self-transparent, logical concept, but breaks with pure conceptuality. In this way, we can better grasp what Hegel means when he says that ‘Nature has unfolded itself [sich ergeben] as the Idea in the form of otherness.’ In the transition to nature we see how 81 logos is real only insofar as it is

other than itself, brimming with the irrationality of the natural world. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that Hegel’s descriptions of nature’s emergence are metaphorical—God’s creation of the world, the free release of the absolute Idea. For this figurative language does not merely point to the fact of nature’s irrationality or externality in relation to the Idea. As figurative, this language attests to the necessity of moving partially outside the logical concept in order to broach the being of nature.

There is no question that Hegel himself would never have endorsed an interpretation of his system such as the one I am advancing here. While it is perfectly acceptable, from a Hegelian perspective, to represent the transition to nature figuratively, philosophy proper

must elucidate this transition in a strictly logical fashion. Indeed, for Hegel, every ontological determination is rational and logically emergent from other rational determinations, including the sheer manifestness of the irrational, natural world. The notion that one might require figurative language to account for a fundamental feature of reality— even its primordial, irrational manifestation—is far too romantic a notion for Hegel.

Therefore, I want to consider how we might interpret the Idea’s ‘free release’ if not as a figurative expression. Like many commentators on Hegel’s nature philosophy, I cannot provide a completely satisfactory account of this transition as a strictly logical development. I do think, however, that Hegel’s basic ideas regarding this matter are relatively clear. Throughout the rest of this thesis, therefore, I set aside my own preference for emphasising a metaphorical description of the Idea’s manifestation and attempt to make sense of the transition to nature in a strictly logical fashion. To do so, I will first consider the general role played by logical transitions in the Science of Logic.