hegel_dialectic_ch02_part6.mp3

63. Again, Hegel rejects Kant’s well known criticism on the ontological proof of the existence of God, and, as this criticism turns on the impossibility of predicating reality through any arguments based only on the definition of the subject, it has been supposed that Hegel did not see this impossibility. “It would be strange,” Hegel says, “if the Notion, the very inmost of mind, if even the Ego, or above all the concrete totality we call God were not rich enough to include so poor a category as Being.” “Most assuredly” is Professor Seth’s comment on this, “the Notion contains the category of Being; so does the Ego, that is to say, the Idea of the Ego, and the Idea of God, both of which are simply the Notion under another name. The category of Being is contained in the Ego and may be disengaged from it.” But, he continues, “It is not the category ‘Being’ of which we are in quest, but that reality of which all categories are only descriptions, and which itself can only be experienced, immediately known, or lived. To such reality or factual existence, there is no logical bridge.” But before we conclude that Hegel has asserted the existence of such a logical bridge, it will be well to bear in mind his warning in the section quoted above, that in God “we have an object of another kind than any hundred thalers, and unlike any one particular notion, representation, or whatever else it may be called.” In what this peculiarity consists is not clearly explained here. But in the middle of the preceding section we find, “That upward spring of the mind signifies that the being which the world has is only a semblance, no real being, no absolute truth; it signifies that beyond and above that appearance, truth abides in God, so that true being is another name for God.” Now, if God is identical with all true being, he certainly has “that reality of which all categories are only descriptions.” For, if he has not, nothing has it, since there is no reality outside him, and the denial of all reality is as impossible as the denial of all truth, - to deny it is to assert it. For if the denial is true, it must be real, and so must the person who makes it. The only question then is whether the category of Being can be predicated of this real God, and in this case Professor Seth admits that Hegel was quite right in his judgment that the predication could be made, if it was worth while. It would seem then that he is scarcely justified in charging Hegel with endeavouring to construct a logical bridge to real or factual existence. Hegel was speaking of something whose real existence could not be doubted except by a scepticism which extended to self-contradiction. Thus he considered himself entitled to assume in his exposition the actual existence of God, and only deliberated whether the predicate of Being could or could not be attached to this existence. To do this he pronounced to be perfectly legitimate, and perfectly useless - legitimate, because we can say of all reality that it is; useless, because the full depth of reality, in which all categories can be found, is expressed so inadequately by this, the simplest and most abstract of all the categories.

64. Kant’s objections do not affect such an ontological argument as this. He shows, no doubt, that we have no right to conclude that anything really exists, on the ground that we have made real existence part of the conception of the thing. No possible attribute, which would belong to the thing if it existed, can give us any reason to suppose that it does exist. But this was not Hegel’s argument. He did not try to prove God’s existence simply from the divine attributes. He relied on two facts. The first was that the conception of God proved that all attributes predicated of anything must, in the last resort, be predicated of God. The second was that experience did exist, and consequently that attributes must be predicated of some existent subject, to account for experience. The important point in the conception of God, for Hegel’s purpose here, was not that he was the most real of beings, nor that he contained all positive qualities, but that he was the only real being. For the existence of an ens realissimum or of an omnitudo realitatis can be denied. But the existence of all reality cannot be denied, for its denial would be contradictory. And, on Hegel’s definition, to deny God’s existence is equivalent to denying all reality, for “true being is another name for God.” "If, in an identical judgment,” says Kant, “I reject the predicate and retain the subject, there arises a contradiction, and hence I say that the former belongs to the latter necessarily. But if I reject the subject as well as the predicate there is no contradiction, because there is nothing left which can be contradicted. . . . The same applies to the concept of an absolutely necessary being. Remove its existence, and you remove the thing itself, with all its predicates, so that a contradiction becomes impossible.” But the Hegelian argument rests on the fact that you cannot remove “the thing itself” because the statement by which you do it, and yourself likewise, are actually existent, and must have some ultimate reality behind them, which ultimate reality, called by Hegel God, is the thing whose removal is in question. Thus there is a contradiction. You can only get rid of the Hegelian God by getting rid of the entire universe. And to do this is impossible. It must be noticed, however, that this form of the ontological argument can only prove the existence of a God who is conceived as the sole reality in the universe. If we ourselves, or anything else, are conceived as existing, except as parts of him, then the denial of his existence does not involve the denial of all reality, and has therefore no contradiction contained in it. Kant’s refutation will stand as against all attempts to prove, by the ontological argument, the existence of a God not conceived as immanent in all existence. It will also be conclusive against all attempts to demonstrate, by means of the ontological argument, any particular quality or attribute of God, unless that attribute can be shown to be essential to his all-inclusive reality, in which case, of course, we should, by denying it, deny the reality also. Kant was right in holding that the ontological argument could not establish the existence of a God, as conceived by his dogmatic predecessors, or as conceived by himself in the Critique of Practical Reason. Hegel was right in holding that it was valid of a God, defined in the Hegelian manner.

65. Professor Seth also relies on Hegel’s treatment of the individual character of existence. “He adroitly contrives to insinuate that, because it is undefinable, the individual is therefore a valueless abstraction.” And he quotes from the Smaller Logic, “Sensible existence has been characterised by the attributes of individuality, and a mutual exclusion of the members. It is well to remember that these very attributes are thoughts and general terms. . . . Language is the work of thought, and hence all that is expressed in language must be universal. . . . And what cannot be uttered, feeling or sensation, far from being the highest truth is the most unimportant and untrue.” Professor Seth calls this “Hegel’s insinuated disparagement of the individual.” But, if anything is disparaged, it is not the individual, but sensible existence. When we say that individuality is not a quality of sensible existence, but depends upon thought, this diminishes the fulness and reality of sensible existence, but not unecessarily of individuality. And it is of vital importance which of these two it is which Hegel disparages. For “the individual is the real,” and an attack on individuality, an attempt to make it a mere product of thought, would go far to prove that Hegel did cherish the idea of reducing the whole universe to a manifestation of pure thought. “The meanest thing that exists has a life of its own, absolutely unique and individual, which we can partly understand by terms borrowed from our own experience, but which is no more identical with, or in any way like, the description we give of it, than our own inner life is identical with the description we give of it in a book of philosophy.” But to deny the importance of the sensible element in experience, taken as independent, is justifiable. It is no doubt perfectly true that we are only entitled to say that a thing is real, when we base that judgment on some datum immediately given to us, and also that those data can only be given us by sense, - inner or outer. But it does not at all follow that the sensible, taken by itself, is real. Thought also is essential to reality. In the first place it would be impossible for us to be self-conscious without thought, since mere unrelated sensation is incompatible with selfconsciousness. Now without self-consciousness nothing would be real for us. Without self-consciousness sensations could not exist. For an unperceived sensation is a contradiction. Sensations exist only in being perceived; and perception is impossible without comparison at the least, which involves thought, and so self-consciousness. Mere sensation may surely then be called unimportant - even Kant called it blind - since it has no reality at all, except in a unity in which it is not mere sensation. It is as much an abstraction as mere thought is. The importance lies only in the concrete whole of which they are both parts, and this reality is not to be considered as if it was built up out of thought and sensation. In that case the mere sensation might be said to have some reality, though only in combination. But here the sensation, as a mere abstraction, must be held not to exist in the concrete reality, but merely to be capable of distinction in it, and thus to have of itself no reality whatever. It is of course true that it is only the immediate contents of experience which need mediation by thought to give them reality, and not self-subsistent entities, - such as our own selves. But Hegel’s charge of unimportance was made against sensations, which are not self-subsistent entities, but simply part of the content of experience. In the Introductory Chapter, in which the passage quoted above is found, Hegel was merely trying to prove that thought was essential, not that it was all-sufficient. It will therefore quite agree with the context if we take this view of what it was to which he denied importance. It would certainly have made his position clearer, if he had, at the same time, asserted the abstractness and unimportance of thought without sense, as emphatically as he had asserted the abstractness and unimportance of sense without thought, but the former is implied in the passages by which the dialectic is made to depend on experience, and explicitly affirmed in the passage from the Philosophy of Spirit in which the logical idea is declared to be dependent on Spirit, and to be mediated by it. For in Spirit we have the union of the two sides which, when separated, present themselves to us as the mediating thought and the immediate datum.

66. We are told also that the tendency of the whole system is towards the undue exaltation of logic and essence, at the expense of nature and reality. In support of this it is said that, although Hegel “talks (and by the idiom of the language cannot avoid talking) of ‘der absolute Geist’ (the absolute spirit) that by no means implies, as the literal English translation does, that he is speaking of God as a Subjective Spirit, a singular intelligence. ... The article goes with the noun in any case, according to German usage; and ‘absolute spirit’ has no more necessary reference to a Concrete Subject than the simple ‘spirit’ or intelligence which preceded it.” It may be the case that Hegel did not conceive Absolute Spirit as a single intelligence. Indeed it seems probable that he did not do so, but the point is too large to be discussed here. But even in that case, it does not follow that the Absolute Spirit cannot be concrete. If it is conceived as an organism or society of finite intelligences, it will still be a concrete subject, although it will possess no self-consciousness or personality of its own. If it is regarded as manifested in an unconnected agglomeration of finite intelligences, it may not be a subject, but will still be concrete, since it will consist of the finite intelligences, which are certainly concrete. No doubt, if a definition or description be asked for of Absolute Spirit, the answer, like all definitions or descriptions, will be in abstract terms, but a definition, though in abstract terms, may be the definition of a concrete thing. Even if the Absolute Spirit was a singular intelligence, any explanation of its nature would have to be made by ascribing to it predicates, which are necessarily abstract terms. And against this asserted tendency on Hegel’s part to take refuge in abstractions we may set his own explicit declarations. He continually uses abstract as a term of reproach and declares that the concrete alone is true. Now it cannot be denied that Nature is more concrete than the pure idea, or that Spirit is more concrete than Nature. This would lead us, apart from other considerations, to suppose that the logical prius of the universe was to be looked for in Spirit, which is the most concrete of all things, and not in the Idea, which is only imperfectly concrete, even in its highest form.