← I’m reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit for the first time, and summarizing and commenting on my progress. Here I’ve read the first part of section B “Self-consciousness”, chapter IV “The truth of self-certainty”, part B “Freedom of self-consciousness”. That elaborate indexing adumbrates the topic matter: Hegel’s studying a self-conscious entity, whose basis for truth is its certainty of its own self, and which (just now) is acquiring the freedom that comes with realizing that its thoughts are one and the same as its self.
Prelude: Rise of the slaves
The previous part ended after the master/slave dialectic. The slave failed to achieve recognition (from its master), but he will be the one to raise his consciousness. In working on things (to serve the master), the slave sees the correlation between its concepts and the product; the slave’s self-consciousness sees itself reflected in its handiwork.
A dichotomy remains for the slave: his concept of himself and of his things are separate. The next ascent for self-consciousness will be to overcome this separation.
I think therefore I am; becoming a thinking “I”
Yet since for us (or in itself) the form given to the thing and the being-for-self are the same-and in the concept of the independent consciousness the intrinsic being-in-itself is consciousness it follows that the aspect of intrinsicality or of thinghood (which acquires form through work) has no other substantiality than consciousness[.] [IV.B.197]*
That is to say: The slave has two categories of beings, one is its own self, the other is things. Yet by experiencing things as objectified concepts, the slave is considering them in the same manner that it does its self. Its self is also an emanation or articulation or manifestation of a concept, namely of the concept of itself. Both its self and things are given via the substance of consciousness. The conclusion (us the readers can make) is that the two categories are one, and therefore change the shape of the consciousness – become a free consciousness.
This aspect of “freedom”, aside from being named in the section title, seems to (1) follow from the nature of the slave wanting to be free, (2) an inevitable outcome that logically follows from the nature of this shape of consciousness, and (3) in line with what I’ve learned of Hegel’s interest in justifying human freedom.
In thinking, I am free, because I am not in an other, but remain simply and solely in communion with myself, and the object, which is for me the essential being, is in undivided unity my being-for-myself; and my activity in conceptual thinking is a movement within myself. [IV.B.197]*
Meditate on the idea that everything you experience, whether of the world or of your own internal existence (e.g. memories), is just and entirely thoughts. There is nothing that you can or have experienced that is not a thought. This trail of thoughts slopes towards a solipsism – if everything is ideas then nothing is real – but this is not Hegel’s trajectory.
The point about freedom is this. When I see that everything is thought, then I become absolutely free, since there is nothing that is not part of me. I may have thoughts that cause me pain (e.g. I think that I stepped on a nail), but this is not proof against my freedom, after all I may just as well think that this pain does not matter. If this particular example is unconvincing, then that is only because we find it hard to imagine not caring about a pain. An easier example could be: the mountain is steep, which can become “this is hard” or “this is a challenge” etc. Together these examples are suggestive of the historical form Hegel associates to this mode of self-consciousness: stoicism.
Outsourcing reality; the content of stoicism’s thought
The free stoic consciousness is not dependent on either a master or slave for knowing the truth. Whether on the throne or in chains, Hegel says, the stoic withdraws from life, “withdraws from the bustle of existence” and “into the simple essentiality of thought” [199]*. But because the stoic has removed himself from the particulars of life, those thoughts must be made up of universals.
Having withdrawn from life, this individual has thoughts with determinate content, since they are prompted by the world. In thinking about things, the stoic conceptualizes them, and thus “alienates” their “determinate” aspect. Since the stoic is not a solipsist, this is inevitable; since the stoic does not just think of its own generated abstract thoughts, and since it has thoughts which (we know) derive from the world and (for the stoic) include details about particulars, therefore there is something in the stoic’s thought that is not derived from itself (i.e. the determinate content).
Overcoming stoicism; a dialectical contradiction
If we ask this stoic for its criterion of truth, all it can tell us is that true content is “reasonableness”. This answer is “contentless” – necessarily, since this consciousness thinks abstractly and derives its determined content from a world it considers alien.
This thinking consciousness as determined in the form of abstract freedom is thus only the incomplete negation of otherness. Withdrawn from existence only into itself, it has not there achieved its consummation as absolute negation of that existence. The content, it is true, only counts as thought, but also as thought that is determinate and at the same time determinateness as such. [201]*
The contradiction in stoicism is caused by its failure to absolutely negate its object. For although it makes the object part of itself (i.e. when it realizes that it thinks about the object and its thoughts are its own), it still leaves the “determinate” aspect of the object outside. It seems to not care what is, since it is free to think about it as it pleases. But in any case, stoicism is a short step away from incorporating even “determinateness” into itself, and this occurs via an obvious candidate: skepticism.
I don’t want to believe; a phenomenology of skepticism
Skepticism is not prone to the same dialectical contradiction as stoicism. Since the dichotomy of abstract/determined doesn’t exist for the skeptic, it is not the case that it is perceiving a reality that is ultimately alien to it. To the skeptic everything is thought, so much so that it is meaningless to speak of thought having determined content.
[In skepticism] thought becomes the concrete thinking which annihilates the being of the world in all its manifold determinateness, and the negativity of free self-consciousness comes to know itself in the many and varied forms of life as a real negativity. [202]*
In other words, the reader’s awareness of the skeptic’s conscious activity is: It has experiences via thoughts and these thoughts consume their content, insofar that to think about a thing is to make that thing due to the thought. It is in this sense that the world is “annihilated”, i.e. within the skeptic’s thoughts it has no origin or “determinateness” or standard or reality, except for being thought. The self-consciousness “negates” things when it subsumes them into itself, and the skeptic in particular negates things by making them in their entirety merely an aspect of his thoughts; so that:
…all differentiated reality becomes a differentiation of self-consciousness. [202]*
Apropos: this variant of skepticism is similar to Berkeley‘s philosophy: also known as idealism, it is normally summarized as: nothing exists outside thought (or in his words, to be is to be perceived); and, all reality is thought. Perhaps Hegel’s skepticism can be called skeptical idealism.
In judging the movements of the skeptic, Hegel has his own descriptions…
Skeptical life: “the vertigo of an ever-self-generating disorder”*
Or as Miller translates it, “the dizziness of a perpetually self-engendered disorder” [205]. This is the constant movement skepticism must undergo, since unlike previous evolutions of consciousness, here the dialectic is inherent in the way the consciousness lives.
On one hand it takes its experiences (thoughts) as having no “determinateness”, which implies that it is a source of absolute freedom qua the immutable observer. But on the other hand, that non-“determinateness” applies just as well to its thoughts of itself, thus making itself just as illusory. This however is not a problem for the skeptic; this is how it sees itself, and how it maintains itself. The moments loop back into each other, each implicating the other, and the other being a retreat for each.
The skeptical consciousness is therefore this mindless oscillation, swinging from the one extreme of self-identical self-consciousness to the other extreme of the fortuitous, confused, and confusing consciousness. [205]*
Following the pattern of Hegel’s text, it is expected that the next form of consciousness will somehow combine these moments. And it does – Hegel names it the unhappy consciousness – however only by taking itself to be a dual-natured; a contradictory being aware of its contradictory identity[206].
P.S.
- I finally experienced reading two translations side by side (Miller and Rauch), and in doing so have finally understood why it is sometimes recommended. Reading two translations is effectively the same as reading the same idea, written twice, in the same arrangement of sentences, yet in different words! Having the same things said differently is especially useful for reading Hegel, whose writing is so often open to interpretation, which is to say vague (or obtuse, or infuriating).
- What is the difference between (Hegel’s) stoicism and skepticism? I find it difficult to hold in my mind these states and see them as different. One is a state of being in which I take the world to be the content of my thoughts, yet I am supposed to have the determined aspect of the content located elsewhere. And the other in which I similarly take the world to be the content of my thoughts, but now am (more?) committed to not believing in any elsewhere, so that there is no metaphysical basis for any sort of justification or “determinate” character. I find it hard to hold onto the first position without immediately slipping into the second. The difference appears to be subtle, and perhaps only due to emphasis (e.g. on absolute freedom, even from the details of thought). Hegel does suggest this, when he says that skepticism is the fulfilment of a freedom that was, for stoicism, only an idea.
- Charles Taylor’s “Hegel” has a few pages on this section. Per my comprehension, Taylor holds: The stoic (i) realizes that the world and himself are equally thought concepts, but (ii) is challenged by his inability to control the content of those thoughts, and so (iii) retreats, holding the contents (or their determinate nature) to be unessential. But (iv) a flaw remains, since free subject must be able to externally express that freedom, and (v) thence skepticism. – Although he doesn’t explicitly say so, it looks as if (i-iii) describe stoicism’s dialectic, with (iv) being the prompt for a new challenge and new shape of consciousness.
- Hegel’s variant of skepticism is similar to Berkeley‘s philosophy: also known as idealism, it is normally summarized as: nothing exists outside thought (or in his words, to be is to be perceived); and, all reality is thought. In comparison, Hegel’s skepticism can be described as skeptical idealism.
