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We now come to the third and final division of Appearance after “The
World of Appearance” and “Content and Form” before passing to “C.-
Actuality”, which after “A.-Essence as Ground of Existence” and B.-
Appearance” is the third and final major division of Essence, itself leading
into the Notion as “the truth of Being and Essence”. This section, “Relation
and Correlation”, itself divides into the relations of Whole and Parts, of
Force and its Expression plus, finally, of Inward and Outward. We
begin immediately with Whole and Parts, which is itself “the immediate
relation”, Hegel declares (135). For “The content is the whole, and consists
of the parts (the form), its counterpart.” Whether or not this repetition of
“part” in “counterpart” reflects the German text, the fact that the parts,
plural, which are the form, singular, are called the counterpart, singular, of
the Whole, just making the Whole a part of some Whole (the same one?)
over again, cannot be passed over. In ordinary life when one person
introduces another as his “counterpart” he implies that he himself is not
the whole (of the organisation), but we treat of Whole itself, signalling that
the final “system” or Notion will not be a composite or whole (but, rather,
we shall see, an identity).
That the parts, not mentioned before, are equated here with the form, of
the whole (we should not say a given whole or assume that that is what is
“really” meant), is but logical. The form constitutes, makes up, the thing,
although both categories have now been superseded by the present one.
The parts are mutually diverse and possess, they alone, “independent
being”. They are only parts when “identified by being related to one
another”. Again, there is perhaps a play upon “identify”. According to the
traditional theory of predication, to which Hegel in a measure subscribes, a
subject is identified, by the copula, with its predicate. Thus here he might
be saying that “being related to one another” is what the parts are, what
any part is, i.e. related to the others. Yet his meaning might include, or
alternate with saying, that in this mutual relation each part becomes the
whole composite of parts and is thus not a part at all. “This also is thou,
neither is this thou.” Part, that is, is “self-cancelling”, as it will anyhow
have to be. Meanwhile, they are parts “when taken together” only. But,
again, “this ‘Together’ is the counterpart and negation of the part”,
singular. It can never be “taken” on its own. If we take out part of an
engine and examine it on its own (and even mere attending to something
is a “taking out” or abstracting of it) it becomes, as object, a whole or,
rather, the whole now being considered. It is precisely as a whole that it
was functioning and may again function as a part.
Essential correlation is the specific and completely universal
phase in which things appear. Everything that exists stands in
correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of every
existence. The existent thing in this way has no being of its
own, but only in something else: in this other, however, it is
self-relation; and correlation is the unity of the self-relation and
relation-to-others (135, Zus. my stress).
What is first a part becomes a whole, any part does, when examined cum
praecisione. There is an alternation, since the whole too is broken down
into parts. This he calls "the negative self-relating element in the
correlation", i.e. it dissolves or cancels itself qua relation. What we have is
a self-identical unity, which is a better name therefore than "whole", What
we took, and commonly take, to be a real way of correlating things, a real
correlation, is actually a "mediating process" in our thinking, which
"supersedes this immanency and gives itself expression" as Force. The
Force, in turn, is the expression of it, we shall find. The transition,
however, is somewhat opaque. We have here expression without some
particular act, we have the pure dialectical thinking as suddenly become
expression of and in force. Or what force is being spoken of? Hegel refers
to Herder's conceiving of God as mainly force and power, which
conception he criticises as limited and hence finite, needing something
else either upon which to work or to elicit it, force and expression
together, in the first place. This force "is not yet genuinely identical with
the form" and that is certainly clear:
If, though, we should compare the relation "between force and its putting
forth" with "the immediate relation of whole and parts" we may note an
advance in the embodiment of "essential correlation", the "specific and
completely universal phase in which things appear." For we are thinking
here still within the category of Appearance, prior to Actuality. The first-
mentioned relation, anyhow, that of force, "may be considered infinite".
For in it "that identity of the two sides is realised, which in the former
relation only existed for the observer." The whole, that is, "ceases to be a
whole when it is divided: whereas force is only shown to be force when it
exerts itself, and in its exercise only comes back to itself." Force and its
Exertion is a more perfect correlation than is that of Whole and Parts,
since correlation of whole and parts leads to the demise of the non-
correlated or independent pseudo-entity within the pair, each in turn. "The
exercise is only force once more." Yet "even this relation will appear
finite." It cannot be applied immediately to the Absolute, as Herder had
done, since there it is absorbed in that Thinking which already has, in its
inward or self-thinking, all that Otherness, all others toward which Force
strives.
Force then is finite in virtue of its mediation, that it is only force when it
exerts itself, as, by superficial contrast, the relation of whole and parts "is
obviously finite in virtue of its immediacy." Thought, by contrast, is itself
thinking, "pure act". Running, too, of course is purely act, but is correlated
with not-running or walking. Thinking is not thus paired, since it is not
conceived in relation to time or occasion. Thinking, Mind, is rather the
"place of all forms" (Aquinas) and prior to the Being which falls into it
(cadit in mente). Hence it is its dialectical Result. Thinking, as Hegel puts it
at the end of this "Doctrine of Essence", as if winding it up,
Such a "force" however is nothing other that its own internal, free and
properly infinite self-differentiation, necessary to the very Notion as
Notion. Thus it is called and is I, Spirit, Love, Blessedness, but not
(substance or) force (159, end).
Mediacy and immediacy are themselves, in the end, finite categories. The
immediate is, as such, mediated and vice versa. This is different from
saying that thinking is itself thought, is self-thinking, in infinite reflection.
Force, anyhow, is always mediated and elicited by something other than
itself, requiring "solicitation" by another exertion of force. This is a
different kind of regress, since each soliciting cannot but be separate or
"abstract", the sign of finitude and falsity. It differs from the properly
infinite or unbounded depth of all thinking, all consciousness, this having
in self, of the other as other, as such; or, as Hegel puts it, this having of
itself as the other. The figurative "in" relation (cp. "I in them and they in
me") gives way to identity, of self and not-self. Self itself, like the former
opposition of the One and the Many, is effectively superseded.
Therefore,
1
John Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, ll. 108-112. This thought is left hanging in
the air, as if a passing reflection of the poet himself.
The reason the force in itself is unknowable is that force is finite as a
category. It has to be this correlation simply. We "see that the apparently
contingent is necessary, by recognising the law that rules it." But then
there is something, albeit apparent merely, that is ruled and such a
relation to what is outside of a thing or category is essentially finite. The
Absolute has no such "real relation" to anything but itself. This law,
furthermore, this generalised Force wrongly postulated as divine, splits up
into forces and disciplines (laws) without end, "gravity, magnetism,
electricity," etc. So also in empirical psychology we have the forces or
"faculties" of "memory, imagination, will," etc. But this multiplicity cannot
be traced back to some "common,primary" force in the same sense of the
term. This would be "empty abstraction", like the "thing-in-itself". Force
and manifestation are "reciprocally dependent", i.e. the correlation is
"mediated", so a primary force "resting on itself" "contradicts its notion".
Hegel here brings out implicitly the hidden ambiguities in the idea, the
thesis, of the potentia absoluta Dei, virtually axiomatic in much fourteenth
century theology especially. We should, again, "object to have God himself
viewed as a mere force." This is a "subordinate and finite category".
Of course God will be abstract and "far away" from "this de-infinitised
world of independent forces and matters". The argument reaches back
into all the dualisms considered, matter and form, finite and infinite, here
being first got to grips with under the banner of correlation, since this
latter is intrinsic to the each of these categories in a new way. What is
essentially correlate is not in itself. The presupposed self-and-other is
taken away, superseded, aufgehoben, put by though remaining (when
needed). "The finite forms of understanding fail to fulfil the conditions for a
knowledge of Nature or of… Mind as they truly are", even though they
have precisely this finite "formal right" to as it were fill out the
abstractions. But ultimately they themselves must coalesce with
philosophy, as must, from the other side, religion as taking refuge in
"mystery". This would be the gist of Hegel's answer to those reproaching
him as not taking evolution, surely a "force" in this eighteenth century
sense, as an absolute mechanical or bio-chemical explanation. There can
be no such. Even more foreign to the Infinite however would be any idea,
taken literally, of "directing", however "intelligently", outwards. Thus the
next correlation of categories to arise is that of Inward and Outward.
The reflection-into-another of Force, its intrinsic putting forth of itself or
pushing itself off from itself, corresponds to the distinction between the
Parts of the Whole (137), considered above. It is "equally a reflection-into
self", what it is, since "this out-putting is the way and means by which
Force that returns back into itself is as a force":
That's it, identity. We should also note the equating, the identification, of
exertion or expression of force with "utterance" here, as covering a range
from divine manifestation through moral behaviour to (exterior) speech
and more, already in the proximately following section.
********************************************
"What is inwardly is also found outwardly and vice versa…. In the essence
there is nothing but what is manifested." Hegel means this literally, as
Essence is Appearance (139). The pair abstractly name the One and the
Many, "multiplicity or reality". "Therefore what is only internal is also only
external: and what is only external, is so far only at first internal" (my
stress), i.e. both are abstract and self-cancelling into their opposites when
taken separately.
So, "if the essence of nature is ever described as the inner part, the person
who so describes it only knows its outer shell." This is of course
Franciscan, where sun, water and death itself (the mark of nature surely)
are brother or sister to the consciousness evoking it. True, the notion is "at
first" inward, like the reason of a child, a mere “inner possibility”, but
therefore it is still "something external to Being", itself "a subjective
thinking and being, devoid of truth." There is no ground in this "at first" for
a giving of priority to this pre-knowledge (by no means proto-) of an
alienated Nature, of an awakening but not yet awake Mind.
This relation "unites" the first two, of whole and parts and of force and
expression, Outward to some extent corresponding to analysis as against
synthesis, one might hazard. Not merely so, however, but it "sets in
abeyance mere relativity and phenomenality in general" as we pass on to
Actuality, the final specification and hence essence of Essence, so to say.
Even the differentiation of Nature and Mind as such depends on this
abstract and unreflected dichotomy between inner and outer, Hegel says
in effect, at least when the difference is "traced back" to that. Certainly
nature is "in the gross" external, "even on its own part" and not merely in
our conception of it. But this is a misuse of "external", which cannot be
thus abstract or absolute, since it is essentially correlated. Rather the Idea,
"common content of nature and mind" (as we shall see), "is found in
nature as outward only, and for that very reason only inward", i.e.
"outward" is as such an inward idea. Nature, that is, as all that is outside is
thus inside or, at the least, not outside. Outside of what, for a start, we
might ask?
Hegel points out that nature, for religion, is God's primary revelation, "no
less than the spiritual world". Here, uncharacteristically, he speaks of the
mind as finite, in order not to suggest priority over nature, as of inward
over outward. By the same token, no merely inward essence of nature
should be sought behind appearance, making an unnecessary mystery as
of an unworthily jealous or envious God, he says. "All that God is, he
imparts and reveals" and "at first, in and through nature", i.e. it does not
come all at once, all the same. Rather, as he teaches of the dialectic, it is
in its fulness final result.
In his identification of Inward and Outward Hegel goes so far as to say that
the penalty meted out to a criminal is “only the manifestation of his own
criminal will”. Here we have an indication of his rejection of the classic
view that relations between citizens in a State are somehow accidental to
man’s eternal destiny. The Centre is here too and nothing is accidental.
What is rendered to Caesar is ipso facto rendered to God, a doctrine by no
means excluding a right of rebellion against unjust regimes. The child,
again, in becoming adult, in “internalising” the “outward”, becomes
himself. Here there is a coincidence of Hegelian and “natural law” doctrine
in ethics, with its slogan of “Become what you are”. Again, even with the
adult, “when, in opposition to his true destiny, his intellect and will remain
in the bondage of the natural man.” One can read elsewhere how Hegel
understands this “natural man”, viz. as something which “absolute
religion”, i.e. Christianity, teaches us to deny and transcend. Here he
relates this to Inward and Outward, to becoming “spiritual”, we might say,
as our “true destiny”. There is no side-stepping this side of Hegel’s vision.
There is a progressive internalisation of the outward which is a realisation
of the Outward’s Inwardness. This in turn, as total, implies that the Inward
is on the (outward) face of things, properly apprehended. There is thus no
appeal from the outward to the inward, from lack of fruit to good intention,
at least in general. A “man is what he does”, what he makes himself and
nothing else, he might almost be saying with Sartre, his partial disciple
after all. “By their fruits ye shall know them”, he quotes. Conversely, it is
mere envy to try to play down outward achievements by stress upon
motivation, specifically inward dispositions and so on. Here he anticipates
what he will say, startlingly, about the wickedness of conscientiousness.
Hypocrisy is too often insinuated beyond the bounds of possibility, since
men “cannot conceal the whole of their inner self”. There is rather, we
might wish to say, an unconscious hypocrisy in those who blether on in
this style.
This “fallacious separation of the outward from the inward” distorts much
historical writing, he thinks, as reflecting a general prejudice against
greatness in individual actors on the historical stage. One looks for ever
more “secret motives” rather than pay tribute, depressing all “to the level
of vulgar mediocrity”. Psychology bears much guilt here. So it would be
interesting to know how Hegel would react to the findings of Freud. He
would surely, first of all, have paid tribute to Freud’s own greatness, with
whom too he had so much in common. Freud went beyond “the petty
knowledge of men”. All the same, Hegel wishes to keep apart
“substantial” interests “of patriotism, justice, religious truth, and the like”
and “subjective” and “formal” interests “of vanity, ambition, avarice, and
the like”. Without this wish, indeed, we lose in as far as a realm of value is
concerned, which is to say we lose Being itself, the Good. It is not only the
latter group that are “really efficient”, as built on the contrast between the
inward and the outward, again. They “have in truth the same content”,
however. So much for this “pedantic judiciality”! Due to this unity “great
men willed what they did, and did what they willed.”
These empty abstractions suspend themselves, the one in the other (141).
The content is “nothing but their identity (§138)”. So the inward is not
merely mediately “put into existence”. It never left it, since inward and
outward are, he winds up, “absolutely identical” Their “difference is
distinctly no more than assumed and imposed.” Now “this identity is
Actuality.”