Hegel’s Faith and Knowledge represents one of the major contributions to the Critical Journal in which Hegel was co-editor with Schelling. Published in July 1802 as the only essay of the first issue of the second volume, it represents a watershed in Hegel’s thought. The original title Hegel gave to this work was “The Kant-Jacobi-Fichtean Philosophy”, with the title page explaining that the author would wholly deal with the “reflective philosophy of subjectivity in the complete range of its forms as Kantian, Jacobian and Fichtean philosophy”. As it will turn out, Hegel will situate the manifestations of these reflective philosophies within an overarching cultural critique of Protestantism.
First, some word about the journal itself. The word about creating a scientific-philosophical journal had been around from 1798, but it only gained steam in 1800 when Schelling asked of the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta to assist him in realizing such an enterprise. Schelling made the suggestion to Fichte that they should edit it together, and Fichte accepted the offer, who himself had entertained ideas about a journal independent of Schelling and Cotta. It was during this time, from 1800 to 1801, that Hegel himself was immersed in Fichte’s own works, an effort which will ultimately culminate in the Difference essay.
However, the original plan was not realized for a number of reasons. Leaving aside the atheism controversy Fichte was embroiled in, there were theoretical disagreements (Fichtean criticism of Schelling’s Absolute, Schelling’s criticism of Fichte’s one-sided view of Nature) as well as personal (Schelling’s private insults, Fichte’s uncharitable interpretations despite Schelling’s direct explanations of the problematic passages) – their correspondence between 1800 to 1802 shows that the once friendly relationship was no more, in part, thanks to Hegel himself and the publication of the Difference essay. Here it must be remarked that while the Difference essay was successful in pointing out the clear divergences between Fichte and Schelling, some of which Schelling and Fichte were unaware of up to that point, the two philosophers, albeit awkwardly, were already aware prior to that that their respective paths were irreconcilable. The essay solidified Hegel’s continued collaboration with Schelling and it served as a blueprint for the Faith and Knowledge essay as well.
Introduction
The introduction begins with a dichotomy that is the lynch-pin of the entire work: faith and knowledge. Hegel states that his time had risen above the “ancient antithesis” of Reason and Faith since the opposition between the two was transferred to the domain of philosophy itself (the age of Enlightenment). No longer the handmaid of faith, as it was during the Middle Ages, Reason asserted its absolute autonomy and proved that Faith’s miracles and its “positive” elements (dogma and superstitious beliefs) were null and void. The Enlightentment was victorious in dispelling the falsehoods of religion, proving Reason’s power. Here, however, Hegel notes that this victory might not have been a victory after all, because what Reason fought against was, in his analysis, a limited conception of Faith that Reason created in order to make the opposition, and enlightened Reason’s own identity in this opposition, meaningful. This is explained by analogy: Reason has suffered the same fate that barbarians suffer after they triumph over civilized nations – they take over them and become their rulers, but they eventually assimilate and succumb to those same conquered nations spiritually – in other words, they are defeated from inside out. The end-result of Reason’s struggle is that it realized that the positive elements which it took to be the essence of Faith were in reality not what Faith was; and that because of this, not only “Faith”, the opponent, but also the very conception enlightened Reason had of itself that it formed through this struggle, had in fact never existed to begin with. For Hegel, this state of affairs resulted into:
“The new born peace that hovers triumphantly over the corpse of Reason and faith, uniting them as the child of both, has as little of Reason in it as it has of authentic faith” (F&K, 55)
This “new born peace” uniting the corpses of Reason and Faith, are “reflective philosophies of subjectivity”, i.e. Kantian, Jacobian and Fichtean.
What Hegel means by this is that these philosophies are the result of Reason’s coming back to itself after cognizing the vacuousness of its victory. In other words, having believed in its own absolute freedom, meaning that it took itself as self-determining and independent from anyone else, including Faith, Reason used its critical powers to dispel the falsehoods of Faith. If something is to be true, it must be true according to the laws of Reason, which are its own laws – there is no external law that Reason can admit other than its own. Faith’s mysteries and miracles stipulated that its truths are beyond the domain of Reason. In having emerged as victorious, however, Reason realized that it cannot supply any positive knowledge of God on its own without refuting itself or falling into antinomies. The truth of the ‘’absolute autonomy’’ and self-determination it took itself to be, conceptions which it formed through the opposition with Faith, was nothing but the power of Reason as critique. It is only after the battle that it retrospectively realizes that it can say nothing substantial about the eternal. Because of this, Reason realizes that all of its knowledge is in fact accidental and finite, because it is outside the eternal which it cannot cognize (and it cannot accept the old dogmas of Faith as a possible method of accessing it either). Since knowledge is nullified from inside out, the only refuge is, ironically, in Faith, but now reconceived as something outside and above Reason itself, transcending Reason – as a Beyond (we will see this term more often).
Already in Faith and Knowledge, therefore, we see the dialectical inversion that would become more prominent in Phenomenology and Logic – declaring independence and freedom from Faith, Reason, through its battle against Faith, only ended up being the handmaid of Faith once again. This time, however, not by acquiesing to its dogmas or miracles, which was formerly taken to be the essence of Faith, but by willingly accepting that true knowledge can only be in a Beyond. The wedge between Reason and Faith persists, with the victor becoming the vanquished and the vanquished becoming the victor. Reason fully submits to Faith once more – the proof of this movement, especially in Germany, are the philosophies of Kant, Jacobi and Fichte.
This is why Hegel believes that the core of the Enlightenment is a “hubbub of vanity without a firm core” (F&K, 56) – the power of its critique is infinite, and yet all knowledge it can actually admit is finite – i.e. knowledge only of this world. The Enlightenment, in turn, declared that man doesn’t need to know the infinite, or partake in God’s knowledge and life. The infinite exists, but it is not something that human Reason can grasp (Kant). This is the Enlightenment’s way of reconciling man to this world. It does this at the expense of conceiving the infinite, the Beyond, as something implicitly (or, as we will see in the case of Protestantism, explicitly) superior to this world. However, the truth of this infinity as a perfect Beyond is that it is nothing more than a finite infinity – Reason, as finite, can never be incorporated within this infinite, and the infinite likewise is limited, since finite Reason can never cognize it and because of this is doomed to remain outside of it. This is why Hegel states that the truth of the Enlightenment is the negative – it is finitude at its purest. The finite that remains outside of infinity, and an infinity that is actually finite, are, because the finite by nature is accidental, nothing. Hegel dismissed the Enlightenment because it made this nothingness into a system. It does not truly resolve the question of God and leaves the reconciliation incomplete.
This is the point at which Faith & Knowledge becomes a cultural critique, because Hegel states that, from the religious point of view, the principle of Enlightenment is also the principle of Protestantism. It is here where the problem of the Enlightenment becomes explicit. Here it is worth quoting the full passage in question:
“Religion builds its temples and altars in the heart of the individual. In sighs and prayers he seeks for the God whom he denies to himself in intuition, because of the risk that the intellect will cognize what is intuited as a mere thing, reducing the sacred grove to mere timber. Of course, the inner must be externalized; intention must become effective in action; immediate religious sentiment must be expressed in external gesture; and faith, though it flees from the objectivity of cognition, must become objective to itself in thoughts, concepts, and words. But the intellect scrupulously distinguishes the objective from the subjective, and the objective is what is accounted worthless and null. The struggle of subjective beauty must be directed precisely to this end: to defend itself properly against the necessity through which the subjective becomes objective. That beauty should become real in objective form, and fall captive to objectivity, that consciousness should seek to be directed at exposition and objectivity themselves, that it should want to shape appearance or, shaped in it, to be at home there-all this should cease; for it would be a dangerous superfluity, and an evil, as the intellect could turn it into a thing (zu einem Etwas)“
Here is an another inversion at play. Earlier it was remarked that the Enlightenment’s reconciliation amounted to the claim that there is no need to have the knowledge of the eternal – reconciliation is knowing this world, and this is the standpoint of enlightened Reason. Within the domain of Protestantism, however, this attitude gives birth to subjectivities of longing. Since the finite = nothing, that which is necessary, the infinite, the Divine must be a perfection beyond this world and Reason’s comprehension. On the other hand, the subject is aware that it cannot access God through commandments or miracles – the elements it previously worked hard to refute. Reason rebels against anything which would portray itself as true and yet hide its essence and characterize it as something mysterious beyond Reason’s grasp. This is, after all, why enlightened Reason fought to refute the superstitions and the supposed miracles – because it saw they were vacuous concepts. But it is precisely here where the problem resides. Something is true insofar as it is objectified – meaning, the truth cannot hide itself. Intellect therefore knows that the inward must be externalised, intention must be actualized, faith must become objective to itself in thoughts. But because the objective world is finite, all knowledge of it, including the world itself, since it is opposed to a perfect Beyond, are worthless. Therefore this subjectivity finds itself in a contradiction – one knows that the truth of intentions and faith not only reside in them having been felt, but also actualized in the objective world, but because the objective world is worthless, they are rendered into things and their worth is diminished as a result of it. Actualizing them, externalizing them, from the purview of Protestant consciousness, is evil. This Protestant consciousness will give birth to the reflexive philosophies that are the theme of Hegel’s text. And as we saw, the Reason which previously fought to eliminate the vacuous concepts of Faith clad in the robes of miracles and mysteries, now fully accepts the Beyond which likewise cannot be conceptualized.
If we go back to the Enlightenment, Hegel’s problem is that it absolutizes the empirical instead of the other pole of the antithesis, the Beyond – however, the immersion into the empirical, or reconciliation with ordinary life for Hegel is a fall into a vulgar eudaemonism. The only upshot is the Enlightenment’s striving toward ,,justification and good conscience”. But if the Absolute is transformed into the empirical, Reason cannot truly achieve reconciliation nor justify its striving. As Hegel says, only the objectivity of the intellect (intellect which is externalized) can attain the concept, which has presented itself in its most highly abstract form as so-called pure Reason (which is the standpoint of reflexive philosophies). This is why he favors Kant, Jacobi and Fichte to the philosophers of Enlightenment, like Hume.
Because of the focus on the empirical, the Enlightenment doesn’t actually realize that when it declares ,,happiness” as the Idea, and this entails immersion into the empirical world, this very same happiness, conceived as the Idea (or the Absolute) is something no longer empirical and sensuous, but abstract. From the standpoint of absolute knowing, the Idea is:
”If the highest bliss is the highest Idea, it is the union between infinite and finite – rational action and feeling. Both of these things are contained within the Idea – the highest Idea cannot be, as the highest being (Dasein), if there is no unity between the two. When Reason cognizes this, these two things in unity, both of these moments vanish and are absorbed into one another. ” The Enlightenment separates one pole from the other – it emphasizes feeling – so it only knows sensual and not ,,the bliss of eternal vision”, which is the unity of feeling and rational action. On the other hand, the culmination of Protestant alienation are the reflexive philosophies which, as we will see later on in Kantian and Fichtean philosophies, emphasize rational action at the expense of feeling.
Philosophies of Reflexive Subjectivities
With all of this in mind, we can approach the criticism of Kant, Jacobi and Fichte. Hegel identifies certain elements that are common to all of these philosophies, whose roots we’ve explored in the previous section.
All of these philosophies take the finite as absolute. It is in and for itself, and it is the sole reality accessible to Reason. Because of this, the infinite and finite are not posited as identical in the Idea, like the aforementioned rational action and feeling are; they are opposed to one another ”in a connection of domination” (F&K, 60). Therefore, the reconciling ”middle term”, which is the third between the two is not present in reflexive philosophies of subjectivity, but is always something beyond Reason which is sundered across two poles (a spurious infinity and finitude). For this reason, the Absolute is absolute emptiness of Reason, faith into the incomprehensible (F&K, 61). This absolute emptiness present in Kantian, Fichtean and Jacobian philosophies is also perfect abstraction – which the Enlightenment was unable to achieve.
To explicate this point even further – Hegel is claiming that the Enlightenment failed in achieving the standpoint of pure thinking, the concept. This absolute abstraction from all empirical content is necessary. Because it was unable to do this, since its Idea was still in part empirical, the opposition between the infinite and finite is not as absolute as it is in philosophies of reflexive subjectivities (it is still implicit). The true opposition that appears in the reflexive philosophies (which are the culmination of what Hegel criticized in the Protestant consciousness) is between the Concept and the empirical – between thought and the world. The empirical is negativity for the concept, the concept is negativity for the empirical, and the concept itself is negative (F&K, 62). As we saw in Hegel’s depiction of Protestant consciousness, the inward is opposed to the external, because the external cannot compare to that which is inward. The Idea, the totality and the unity of the Concept and empirical, remains undiscovered. However, it is only in these philosophies that reflection becomes possible – namely, in absolute opposition. This is why Hegel states:
”The fundamental principle common to the philosophies of Kant, Jacobi and Fichte is, then, the absoluteness of finitude and, resulting from it, the absolute antithesis of finitude and infinity, reality and ideality, the sensuous and the supersensuous, and the beyondness of what is truly real and absolute. Within this common ground, however, these philosophies form antitheses among themselves, exhausting the totatity of possible forms of this principle”
Here it must be remarked that Hegel thinks that that oppositions, or dualisms, are necessary, but they are not the final word. Even if the Idea or the totality remains unknown to these philosophies, from the standpoint of absolute knowing it is to their credit that they, even if they failed in grasping it, nonetheless carved a path to the Idea as the unity of the Concept and the empirical, precisely because they reduced the both poles of the antithesis to their purity. This point will be made further clear in Hegel’s depiction of Kant’s philosophy. Kant postulated that the absolute concept is practical Reason, existing strictly for itself. Kant’s objectivity becomes subjectivity in Jacobi – the antithesis between the finite and the infinite is transposed into feeling of Reason, and Reason is infinitely longing and grieving. Fichtean striving is obligatory and infinite, never to end in personal self-fulfillment. (F&K, 62) In Hegel’s eyes they are still within the domain of Enlightenment’s eudaemonism, as much as they are opposed to its emphasis on ordinary life by opting for rational action (especially Kant and Fichte, less so Jacobi). They simply chose the other pole of the antithesis, but this did not solve the problem, nor effect a genuine reconciliation. Described as the systematization of the culture of reflection described above in Protestantism, they remained stuck to bad infinity.
“For this infinite is itself not the truth since it is unable to consume and consummate finitude…If the absolute were put together out of the finite and the infinite, abstracting from the finite would indeed be a loss. In the Idea, however, finite and infinite are one, and hence finitude as such, i.e., as something that was supposed to have truth and reality in and for itself, has vanished. Yet what was negated was only the negative in finitude; and thus the true affirmation was posited.” (F&K, 65-66)
Kantian Philosophy
One of the things Hegel commends Kant for is for being forthright. At the beginning of his critique he states:
“Because the essence of the Kantian philosophy consists in its being critical idealism, it plainly confesses that its principle is subjectivism and formal thinking. Secure in its standpoint, which makes the unity of reflection supreme, it reveals what it is and aims at, by telling its story quite frankly. The name of Reason which it gives to the Concept may, at the worst, impede the disclosure or mask it. “
For Hegel, Kant confesses that his ultimate standpoint is that of being a subjectivist. Within the first Critique the highest Idea in Kant is something that is absolutely empty – nothing can be said of the thing-in-itself, and all possible knowledge is finite. Within the “final stage of development”, Kant does establish the highest Idea, but this Idea is something that merely has subjective, and not objective necessity – this highest Idea Kant can grasp is the Practical Reason, which remains separate from the world of phenomena and lies in the noumenal world. Because the phenomenal and noumenal selves are separated and situated respectively in the world of causality and world of freedom, Kant’s philosophy remains within the antithesis between the empirical and freedom.
There is merit in Kant’s philosophy, however. Its merit lies in the fact that it cognizes that the Concept cannot remain in isolation from anything that is intuitied and vice versa. It recognizes the importance of experience – intuition by itself is blind and the concept by itself is empty (CPR: A 51, B 75). But because it is confined to experience and opposes it to an unknowable Beyond, the noumenal, it remains absolute finitude. The direction Kant had chosen to adopt is due to his “critique of cognitive faculties”- in doing so it simultaneously expresses genuine “speculative” insights as well as downfalls. By asking the question “How are synthetic a priori judgements are possible”, Kant expresses “the authentic Idea of Reason”, because the correct answer to this question, for Hegel, is that the subject and predicate of synthetic judgements are identical. The issue for Hegel is that Kant approached the question in an external manner and as a result remained bound to empty universality. For that reason, one can see “glimpses into the Idea” especially at the point of original synthetic unity of apperception as the principle of synthesis and spontaneity.
The first merit: Apperception and Productive Imagination
To understand Hegel’s point about the apperception, we need to delve into Kant. It is the principle of synthesis of forms of intuition and of all the manifold in our representations. (CPR: A 106, A 117, B 131-9, 150-3, 160-1). What Kant correctly grasps, for Hegel, is that the unity of apperception is an original identity, not a generated product out of the opposites:
“Now no cognitions can occur in us, no connection and unity among them, without that unity of consciousness that precedes (my emphasis) all data of the intuitions, and in relation to which all representation of objects is alone possible. This pure, original, unchanging consciousness I will now that of the a name transcendental apperception. That it deserves this name is already obvious from this, that even the purest objective unity, namely priori concepts (space and time) is possible only through the relation of the intuitions to it. The numerical unity of this apperception therefore grounds all concepts a priori, just as the manifoldness of space and time grounds the intuitions of sensibility. ” (CPR: A 107)
“Just this transcendental unity of apperception, however, makes out of all possible appearances that can ever come together in one experience a connection of all of these representations in accordance with laws. For this unity of consciousness would be impossible if in the cognition of the manifold the mind could not become conscious of the identity of the function by means of which this manifold is synthetically combined into one cognition. Thus the original and necessary consciousness of the identity of oneself is at the same time a consciousness of an equally necessary unity of the synthesis of all appearances in accordance with concepts, i.e., in accordance with rules that not only make them necessarily reproducible, but also thereby determine an object for their intuition, i.e., the concept of something in which they are necessarily connected; for the mind could not possibly think of the identity of itself in the manifoldness of its representations, and indeed think this a priori, if it did not have before its eyes the identity of its action, which subjects all synthesis of apprehension (which is empirical) to a transcendental unity, and first makes possible their connection in accordance with a priori rules. ” (CPR: A 108)
While the intuition is immersed in the manifold and sensibility gives us forms of intuition, the intellect goes through the appearances and finds laws through them – or, in Kant’s terms, the intellect (understanding) is:
“…itself the legislation for nature, i.e., without understanding there would not be any nature at all, i.e. synthetic unity of the manifold of appearances in accordance with rules, for appearances… exist only in our sensibility.”
The understanding is the higher potency; the manifold in which the intuition is submerged and is undifferentiated only comes to be differentiated through the intellect and as a result comes to be opposed to the intellect itself. In other words, the identity of the intellect (understanding) is not to be submerged within the manifold like the intuition is, where there is no unity because there is no difference, but to “set itself against the manifold” (F&K, 70). In doing this, it sets its identity, in contrast to the intuition, as something opposed against the manifold – it cannot be captured by the manifold. It coarses through it, setting laws which are its own and to which the manifold must obey – thereby constituting itself, the intellect, as an universality. In this sense, it maintains this unity by excluding itself from this manifold. Without this same manifold, however, the concept would empty, which is why it is necessary, and despite its self-exclusion, is identical to it (else there would be no point of contact).
It is here we must ask ourselves the obvious question – why are they identical? What is the prerequisite which enables the contact in the first place? With this in mind, since apperception is that which underlies the possibility of all and any knowledge and precedes all data of intuition, we have to inquire into what the form of that knowledge is. This is what Hegel especially praised in Kant: the transcendental unity of imagination. This is the pure form of all possible knowledge and through which all objects must be represented a priori. In this way, the genuine speculative dimension for Hegel consists in the fact that the original synthetic unity of apperception presupposes an originary synthesis – meaning, it presupposes a synthesis prior to itself which is absolutely posited; and this is precisely the “productive imagination”, the pure form of the knowledge that the apperception presupposes, since it is itself the condition of knowledge. If the apperception is to be a priori, then this presupposition as well must be considered necessary and a priori. In other words, this is the positing of presuppositions – through deducing the apperception, Kant discovers that this itself contains a presupposition that is necessarily a priori if the former is to be a priori.
It is important to explain what positing of presuppositions mean. Kant’s deduction of a necessary originary synthesis is something that he arrived through the very process of deducing apperception – meaning, he did not presuppose it from the beginning (in which case it would not count as a speculative insight for Hegel). Kant’s discovery amounts to realizing that this presupposition can only be reached through the process itself – this presupposition thereby incorporates the process in itself as something that is not external to its content, but immanent, and this necessity is retroactive. This is what it means to be self-determining – the greatest speculative insight in Kant is precisely this transcendental imagination. As Kant himself states:
“The principle of the necessary unity of the pure (productive) synthesis of the imagination prior to apperception is thus the ground of the possibility of all cognition, especially that of experience. “
So what does the transcendental imagination do? It is the very connection of the manifold a priori. Kant is then capable of recognizing that the unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of the imagination is the empirical understanding, while the unity of apperception in relation to transcendental synthesis of the imagination is the pure understanding – the cognitions that are a priori conditions of the ordinary understanding, and which themselves contain the synthesis of pure (productive) imagination. These cognitions are the categories of pure understanding, the very same understanding (or intellect) described above.
We can now go back to Hegel’s thesis about Reason being the identity of the subjective and objective (particular subject and predicate). The productive imagination is a “truly speculative Idea” (F&K: 71) because it is not something that is produced out of the antithesis and needs the manifold of the antithesis to construct itself; it is self-positing and precedes the antithesis. The transcendental synthesis of the productive imagination is the very connection of the manifold in knowledge – it fits Hegel’s notion of being the identity of the heterogenous elements, subjective and objective – intuition and understanding that the apperception unites. But, the following point is equally important for Hegel: as the original identity, it is also that out of which intuition and intellect are respectively sundered from, and as a result made separate from each other as separate faculties. They remain so.
Problem: Judgement
In order to understand the crux of Hegel’s critique, we need to inquire into how does this manifest itself? This is where it is necessary to turn to judgements, or as Kant says “the power of judgements” (CPR: B: 177/A: 138) to show the possibility of, and how, pure concepts of understanding are applied to appearances. As Kant goes on to prove the necessity of a mediating term between the previously mentioned two (transcendental schema: CPR A: 139/B: 178), the next question that concerns us is what is the relation of the pure principles of the understanding and the forms of judgements. Hegel notes that the absolute identity (the imagination) in the judgement is the copula “is, without consciousness” (my emphasis) (F&K: 72). Because the judgement implies separation and difference, the absolute identity is something that is immersed in the absolute antithesis, and not something that truly unites them – since it’s not cognized. Instead of uniting them, because it’s utterly unthought as being merely the copula, it just delineates and sharpens the difference between the subject and predicate (which, if you’ll recall, is opposed to Hegel’s thesis). The latter two are all that is posited within the judgement as that which may be thought (or, as objects of thought) – while the identity of the universal and the particular, the “is”, is the “non-conscious” element of the judgement.
What Hegel warns against is thinking that the productive imagination is simply a middle term that is contingently inserted between subject and object (world) – it is the very original identity out of which the subject and the objective world sunder themselves into appearance and product. The problem is that Kant remains at the level of sundering only – he can only cognize Reason as it appears within the empirical (finite) domain. What this means for Hegel is that Kant correctly established the In-itself, which is encapsulated by the power of imagination (as absolute identity). Since he could only see the duplication of this power in terms of the judgement (which is relative identity, opposed to the absolute identity of the imagination) and as that of the universal and the particular (which in Hegel’s eyes is relative duplication) the absolute identity was made relative. The result of this is that, according to Hegel, it became fixated as the intellect (i.e. understanding) and merely universal without content. Because of this, it can only find itself in opposition to the empirical. Hegel is arguing that the judgement in Kant does not necessitate a priori inference – it does not achieve the demonstration of the passage from the appearing of the in-itself to the cognition of the in-itself. There is a lack of correlation between the in-itself (absolute identity) and for-itself (unthought, purely universal rational identity). This is why Hegel sarcastically remarks:
“It is for this reason that the absolute judgment of idealism as expounded by Kant [i.e., the synthetic judgment a priori] may, and, on this level [the Potenz of Reason as intellect], and must be grasped in such a way that the manifold of sensibility, empirical consciousness as intuition and sensation, is in itself something unintegrated, that the world is in itself falling to pieces, and only gets objective coherence and support, substantiality, multiplicity, even actuality and possibility, through the good offices of human selfconsciousness and intellect.”
Problem 2: Thing-in-itself
By limiting Reason, Kant also made the whole world dependent upon Reason itself. This demonstrates Kant’s failure for Hegel – by trying to limit Reason and stop the understanding’s arrogance, as he himself says in Critique of Judgement, he did exactly the opposite. This can also be seen in relation to the things-in-themselves. Things-in-themselves can only be objectively determined if there is “man’s own perspective and projection” (F&K: 74). Because sensation and things-in-themselves are beyond man’s cognition, the sensation that the subject experiences are themselves not a priori (grounded in the subject’s cognition) and for Hegel, it seems that the two (the subject and the world as it is) co-exist only by being radically separated from one another, while the objective still depends upon the subject to have some determinateness. Nonetheless, Kant does have speculative insights here; relations of appearances as judgements in the proofs of necessity between e.g. cause and effect. The problem is that this is still subjective, i.e. only from the side of the cognitive subject. It is true that the judgement does have some relation to the objective – they are identical – but only in form. The content cannot be identical, else this would break the Kantian limits. This is why for Hegel Kant falls into a contradiction when he makes the thing-in-themselves nothing more than an infinite non-identity, “a formless lump” that is next to the subject and simultaneously a realm of “beauteous nature and contains determinations with respect to which judgement cannot be subsumptive but only reflecting” which Kant declares in the Critique of Judgement (F&K: 76). This means that the realm of things-in-themselves cannot be cognized but can be reflected upon. Because of this the categories of the human subject prove to be accidental and contingent, since they are compared to an infinite, perfect Beyond (recall Hegel’s critique of Protestantism at the beginning of the section).
If we go the former route, namely the route that we can only cognize appearances and nothing in itself, then the logical conclusion is that we can also only cognize ourselves as appearances. But Kant cheats here for Hegel, as he does concerning the things-in-themselves, when he asserts that this is not the case, and that the intellect is absolute in man. If the intellect is absolute, then how can we explain its contingency which is inferred by the fact that it cannot comprehend the Beyond? This point is also related to Hegel’s critique of Kant’s view on the relationship between the body and the soul – Hegel notes that Kant correctly, in his view, locates the problem in the cognition of the “assumed heterogenity of… the soul and the objects of outer sense” (F&K: 77). But Kant’s solution, according to Hegel, is that he posits that this difference is only outwardly – inwardly, they might be the same. This is why Hegel sarcastically remarks that Kant was not so consistent to his own standpoint after all because:
“As can be seen, it is for the sake of dear mankind and its cognitive faculty, that Kant so little esteems his thought that maybe the two kinds of things are not so heterogeneous in themselves, but only in appearance. He regards this thought as a chance idea about a maybe and not as a rational thought at all.” (F&K: 78)
The example above demonstrates Kant’s dogmatism. In Hegel’s eyes, Kant is trying avoid the obvious, logical conclusion of his edifice: dualism. In Kant the identity of opposites is present, but the Idea which unites the two is formal and is only the intellect – which, again, can be only opposed to the empirical content. On the other hand, the in-itself that is expressed here are not of the things-in-themselves, but of finite Reason as such. If the intellect, as Kant wants us to believe, is absolute, by remaining subjective it becomes finite and contingent. What is Kant unable to cognize, according to Hegel, is that the Idea, the intellect, cannot only in principle be a posteriori, but also necessarily in content. What this means is that it is necessary to extend the apriority Kant correctly expressed in the transcendental imagination to be also a genuine aposteriority (which in Kant isn’t, as we’ve explored in the case of judgement). The apriori must not be opposed to that which is aposteriori. But because in Kant it is, the unity of Reason, which is related to the intellect and judgement and is itself higher than the intellect, is merely empty or formal. This is exactly the problem of Kant’s Practical Reason for Hegel, which, because the noumenal self is separated from the empirical self, is empty and yet for some reason is capable of “giving itself content” in the form of duties independent of the empirical realm (F&K: 81). Hegel argues that this cannot be done and that Kant’s morality is empty, because it is placed in the Beyond. Herein consists Hegel’s opposition to Kant’s thesis of spontaneity and autonomy – this cannot be true if the infinite (Practical Reason), by abstracting from the finite, is thereby limited by it since the two realms are differently legislated and the separation is final (Practical Reason cannot be applied in the realm of causality, and Theoretical Reason cannot be applied in the realm of freedom – noumenal realm). What Kant does not realize in Hegel’s eyes is the fact that by eliminating the empirical realm from the perspective of Practical Reason, he also eliminates the noumenal realm and Practical Reason along with it – and because the noumenal realm, which is supposed to be infinite, and Practical Reason, which is supposed to be free, are conditioned by this fact, they cannot be truly autonomous. On the other hand, theoretical Reason cannot generate its own content either, but has to be supplied by something external to it (thing-in-itself).
For this reason Hegel disapproves of the differentiation between empirical and noumenal self – it does not achieve, by its own standards, what it set out to do. The erroneous nature of Kant’s critique can be most seen in his refutation of the ontological proof for Hegel. Because Kant’s perspective is finitist and does not grasp the nature of the Idea (recall that Hegel considered that the Idea remains empty in Kant), Hegel wholly rejects his refutation.
“This critique positively asserts the absolute opposition of freedom in the form of concept and necessity in the form of being, and brings about the complete victory of nonphilosophy over the horrible delusion that deranged and blinded previous philosophy…Kant made his triumph even more brilliant and comfortable for himself by taking what used to be called the ontological proof of the existence of God in the worst form it is capable of which is the form given to it by Mendelssohn and others. They turned existence into a property so that the identity of Idea and reality was made to look like the adding of one concept to another. Altogether-especially in his refutations-Kant showed a pervasive ignorance of philosophical systems and a lack of any information about them that went beyond purely historical data” (F&K: 85)
Second Merit: Reflecting Judgement
Lastly, we must consider the second great speculative insight Hegel detected in Kant – the reflecting judgement from the Critique of Judgement (F&K: 86).
“Does judgment, which in the order of our [specific] cognitive powers is a mediating link between understanding and reason, also have a priori principles of its own? Are these principles constitutive, or are they merely regulative (in which case they would fail to prove that judgment has a domain of its own)? Does judgment give the rule a priori to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, the mediating link between the cognitive power [in general I and the power of desire (just as the understanding prescribes laws a priori to the cognitive power and reason to the power of desire)? “
“So judgment itself must provide a concept, a concept through which we do not actually cognize anything (my emphasis) but which only serves as a rule for the power of judgment itself-but not as an objective rule, to which it could adapt its judgment, since then we would need another power of judgment in order to decide whether or not the judgment is a case of that rule. This perplexity about a principle (whether subjective or objective) arises mainly in those judgments called aesthetic, which concern the beautiful and the sublime in nature or in art. ” (CoJ: Ak 176-179)
Kant states that this is necessary because:
“For though these judgments do not by themselves contribute anything whatever to our cognition of things, they still belong to the cognitive power alone and prove a direct relation of this power to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure according to some a priori principle… aesthetic judging is directly referred to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure distinguishes it from a certain kind of) logical judging of nature: when experience manifests in things a lawfulness that understanding’s concept of the sensible is no longer adequate to help us understand or explain, judgment can find within itself a principle that refers the natural thing to the uncognizable supersensible (my emphasis), though judgment must use this principle for cognizing nature only in relation to itself.” (CoJ: 169-170)
What Hegel commends here is the fact that the reflecting judgement (Hegel’s term) as Kant conceived it is the middle term between the empirical and the noumenal – the theoretical reason and the “intellect as pure abstraction” (practical Reason). It is supposed to solve the problem that Hegel criticized above. However, there is still an issue – this middle term is not the suspension of the antitheses between the absolute and relative identity, or differently put, it is not the elevation above the sphere of synthetic judgement a priori whose problems we’ve explored earlier. The reason for this is because this middle term, the reflecting judgement, is uncognizable. Later on, while Kant does conceive of an imagination that is lawful by itself (has absolute autonomy) and concord between the imagination and the intellect (meaning that the intellect can supply the necessary concepts for the representations of the imagination), this can only occur if the Idea is aesthetic – meaning that the representation by the imagination is still something that can’t be captured by any concept of the understanding. The resolution of the antinomy of taste, likewise for Hegel, is a failure, because Reason is still the “undetermined Idea of the supersensuous in us… without any further possibility of its being made comprehensible” (F&K: 86). This is why:
“An esthetic Idea cannot become cognitive because it is an intuition of the imagination for which no concept can ever be found adequate. An Idea of Reason can never be cognitive because it contains a concept of the supersensuous for which no intuition can ever be found commensurate” (CoJ: 342).
Problem: False Middle term
Hegel’s problem with this standpoint is that while Kant does recognize that the antitheses need to vanish, his insight is negative, because he situates this vanishing within his concept of the supersensuous, which, as we’ve established, is uncognizable, and from a Hegelian perspective, is itself negative and finite. Kant did succeed in conceiving beauty as the Idea that is experienced, but again he did not grasp that because there is an antithesis between the sensuous and the supersensuous, the supersensuous is unknowable, not the other way around. The non-intelligibility does not come from the limitations of the understanding, as Kant himself had thought – but when the understanding reifies the difference between a supposed unattainable Beyond and the sensuous realm (recall what was remarked at the beginning of the section; Hegel thought oppositions are necessary, but that they are not the final word). So even though we’re necessarily driven to the Idea, the systematic unity of the Reason, no reality can be predicated of it. According to Hegel, what Kant was unable to realize is that, ironically, he had Reason in its true totality all along in front of him. First, the issue of separation between the empirical and the noumenal: Hegel notes that the most important fact of this separating is that Kant himself was aware of this separation between these two realms, and not only appearance as a product of this separation. What this means is that Kant was implicitly aware of the totality that bonds both the sensuous and the supersensuous. Then he conceived of an intuition that is capable of transcending this boundary. He was also cognizant of the separation between Reason and in-itself; he has the Idea of Reason where the opposed elements are absolutely identical. He even recognized that, as Hegel states, in and for itself it may be possible that nature may truly follow both legislations of freedom and causality grounded within a transcendental principle that reconciles both legislations, something which was considered impossible in the first Critique (Kant explores this question when inquiring into teleology). What Hegel is saying is that there is no distance between the understanding and the empty, but necessarily generated Idea of Reason – the moment you generate the Idea of infinite Reason, you are already within the domain of infinite Reason. So each time Kant is faced with two viewpoints: finite or truly infinite, in Hegel’s terms, he opts for the former every time – rational knowledge always transcends Reason, and in the case of Nature, the concord between these legislations is a postulate whose guarantee lies in a transcendent deity incomprehensible to man. Let us also here recall the example that Hegel himself doesn’t cite, but encapsulates this point clearly: In the Anthropology, Kant himself had thought that if God entered into the phenomenal world, and revealed himself in all of his splendor, the subject’s freedom in that moment would vanish – from a Hegelian perspective, this position is untenable because it implies an opposition between freedom and necessity. This is why the subjective insight is always made absolute – and yet Kant was also the one who recognized in the intuition of beauty the supersensuous (F&K: 91). This is why Hegel states:
“The truly speculative aspect of Kant’s philosophy can only consist in the Idea being thought and expressed so definitely, and the pursuit of this side of his philosophy is the only interesting aspect of it. This makes it all the harder to see the Rational being muddled up again, and not just that, but to see the highest Idea corrupted with full consciousness, while reflection and finite cognition are exalted above it.” (F&K: 92)
What Kant is unable to conceive of is the role negativity has, and that the lack of correlation between the in-itself and for-itself are itself moments within the unity of the Idea, not an indication of its failure. For Hegel, Kant could not achieve this insight, because he equated Idea as totality of the empirical+noumenal with the finite intellect – he was unable to see, to put it in Heideggerian terms, the ontological difference between the finite and the true infinite (which is why Hegel rejects Kant’s refutation of the ontological proof of God – the only infinity Kant can conceive of is bad i.e. finite infinity, and the infinity of the Idea, as the unity, cannot be equated to an infinity that is limited by, or abstracts from either of the elements within the unity – and this is what Kant does in the case of the noumenal realm and Practical Reason). Because of this he always has formal identity that is supplied, or supervened by something that is foreign to it (which in reality, within the totality of the Idea, isn’t): the culmination of this movement in Kant is the supersensuous in the Critique of Judgement. What is never explained as a result of this is the bond between practical reason and theoretical reason, the super-sensuous and the sensuous. Because the middle is un-cognizable, the identities within these antitheses are poor and incomplete. As Hegel remarks, Kant’s statement that these antitheses do presuppose a middle (which we’ve explored in the case of productive/transcendental imagination and reflecting judgement) that reconciles the elements i.e. nullifies the antitheses is not true because this very bond is inaccessible to finite Reason, meaning it cannot know the reconciliation. For Hegel, this simply means there is no reconciliation.
“…it is only a confession that there ought to be a Reason. And it is all [the middle] posited in a faith, whose content itself is empty because the antithesis, which as absolute identity could be its own content (my emphasis), has to remain outside it; expressed positively, the content of this faith would be Reasonlessness, because it is an absolutely un-thought, unknown and incomprehensible Beyond (my emphasis).” (F&K: 94)
Conclusion
The inability to allow the absolute identity to be its own content because of the unawareness of the Idea is the hallmark of Kantian philosophy for Hegel. His critique essentially does the opposite of what it claims: by limiting the intellect he also makes the whole world dependent upon it (case of determination of the things-in-themselves), by exalting it as absolute in man he simultaneously shows its contingency in face of the Beyond (reflecting judgement), and in conceiving the autonomy and spontaneity of the Practical Reason, the infinite freedom of the individual, by abstracting from the empirical world he makes that freedom empty and vacuous (erroneous equation of Idea = intellect, which is just one element within the unity of the Idea). Kant is the prime example of the philosophy of reflexive subjectivity from within the domain of Protestantism – he declares that it is enough to know this world, and yet the structure he adopts in order to do so says otherwise. Hegel’s account of Kant essentially consists in that his critique failed to do what it promised it would do. The inequality, contradictory nature of the Kantian system that manifests as a result, encapsulated in the example of imagination-judgement we’ve explored above, is due to the fact he did not grasp what the middle term is. And as we’ve seen in Hegel’s criticism of Protestantism – like the Protestant consciousness, which is aware that the inward must be externalized in order for it to be true, but rejects the external world – the Kantian system does exactly the same. It knows that the inward must be externalized, and yet the external is always something that is foreign to the subject and something that also depends upon the consciousness of man (thing-in-itself) even though the whole system’s supposed point is that it is a critique of man’s cognitive faculties. We’ve also seen how in the last stroke it inverts this thesis by also simultaneously positing that the supersensuous realm, instead of being a non-identity, is made transcendent of human intellect, even though this contradicts Kant’s thesis that the intellect is absolute in man, since it makes this very same intellect contingent. Kant’s critical edifice, in Hegel’s eyes, becomes dogmatic. But we’ve also seen that Hegel recognizes genuinely speculative insights that Kant had made in transcendental imagination and the reflecting judgement. Even if he did opt for finitude at every stroke, Kant did stick to his postulates – something that Fichte, according to Hegel, although he advocated that he was expounding the true spirit of Kantian philosophy, did not do (which is why, paradoxically, in Hegel’s account he will represent the culmination of reflexive philosophy). Kant’s Reason is pure negativity that is still limited by the positivity of the empirical world. Nonetheless, it is also in discovering this absolute opposition between the concept and the world that:
“…we shall find nothing else expressed in it but the Idea that Reason does have absolute reality, that in this Idea the antithesis of freedom and necessity is completely suspended, that infinite thought is at the same time absolute reality – or in short we shall find the absolute identity of thought and being (my emphasis).” (F&K: 94)
History & Stuff 